Tuesday, April 17, 2007

World's Most Expensive Street Rents

New York's Fifth Avenue Charges World's Highest Rents

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Rents on New York's Fifth Avenue rose 38 percent during the past year as retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch Co. competed for space on the world's most expensive shopping street, Cushman & Wakefield Inc. said.

Prime rents were $13,993 per square meter a year at the end of June, up from $10,226 a year earlier, New York-based Cushman & Wakefield said in a report published today. Rents in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong jumped 90 percent to $11,653, leapfrogging Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris as the second-most expensive street.

"The international race for space is continuing unabated,'' Darren Yates, the head of U.K. market analysis at Cushman & Wakefield who wrote the report, said in a statement. "A growing number of global brands are vying for limited space on the pavements of the world's top shopping destinations.''

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, which has a Fifth Avenue store, and Cie. Financiere Richemont AG are among luxury-goods companies opening new stores as the 134 billion-euro ($162 billion) industry rebounds from a slump in the second half of 2003. The global luxury-goods market will grow about 7 percent this year, fueled by consumers with more money to spend in the U.S. and Asia, according to a Bain & Co. study from this week.

London Rivalry

New Bond Street toppled Oxford Street as London's most expensive shopping street for the first time in 20 years after rents rose 25 percent in local currency terms to $6,753 per square meter a year. Oxford Street rents increased 5.3 percent to $5,788.

New Bond Street remains in fourth place, according to real- estate services provider Cushman & Wakefield, which considers only the most expensive street in each of the 47 countries it surveys to compile a global ranking. The report covered 237 streets and malls. Rents rose by 8 percent on average.

Madison Avenue and East 57th Street in New York are more expensive than either Avenue des Champs-Elysees, where rents are $8,024, or New Bond Street, said Cushman & Wakefield.

Prime rents on Madison Avenue are $10,764, while East 57th Street's top price is $8,073. Abercrombie, a New Albany, Ohio-based casual-clothing retailer catering mainly to teenagers, is opening a 34,000-square-foot store on the corner of 5th Avenue and 56th Street.

"The hottest stretch of Fifth Avenue is north of 49th Street,'' Gene Spiegelman, executive director of retail services at Cushman & Wakefield in New York, said in the statement. ``We are seeing luxury brands being joined by the popular fast-fashion brands, all in search of global brand recognition.''

Zurich, Moscow

Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse leapt into the top ten cities after rents in Switzerland's largest city jumped 47 percent to $3,513. Moscow's Tervskaya street was the only one to drop out of the top 10, falling to 11th place from seventh as rents fell 2.9 percent to $3,400.

Rents on Krasta in the Latvian capital of Riga fell 38 percent to $363 per square meter a year, the cheapest in the survey. Beirut is the most expensive city in the Middle East, costing $1,500 in the city center.

The following is a table of the 10 most expensive shopping streets by city. Rents quoted are in dollars and are calculated per square meter per year. The 2004 ranking is in brackets.

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City           Street              2005 Rent      2004 Rent  New York       Fifth Avenue        13,993         10,226 (1) Hong Kong      Causeway Bay        11,653         6,126 (3) Paris          Avenue des Champs   8,024          7,648 (2)                Elysees London         New Bond Street*    6,753          5,564 (4) Tokyo          Ginza               5,578          3,348 (9) Dublin         Grafton Street      4,423          4,103 (5) Sydney         Pitt Street Mall    3,807          3,449 (8) Seoul          Myeongdong          3,764          3,241 (10) Munich         Kaufingerstrasse    3,632          3,577 (6) Zurich         Bahnhofstrasse      3,513          2,395 (13)
>* Oxford Street was London's most expensive street in 2004>

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