Asia Has 3 of World's Most Expensive Shopping Streets

A survey of rents in the world’s top 269 shopping locations in 59 countries by Wakeman & Cushfield has found Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul to host, respectively, the world’s second, third and eighth most expensive retail streets.

New York’s Fifth Avenue, where rents increased by 8.8%, kept its top spot as the world’s most expensive retail address for the ninth straight year. Some Fifth Avenue retailers pay upwards of $1,850 per square foot per year.

Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay kept the number two spot. Tokyo’s Ginza climbed from fifth last year to third this year.

The number four spot went to London’s New Bond Street which overtook Paris’s Champs-Elysées where rents fall 9.5%.

Seoul’s Myeongdong fashion district jumped three places from eleventh to eighth.

The world’s biggest riser in rents is Sao Paulo’s Haddock Lobo street where rents increased by 92%.

The biggest riser in Asia was Mumbai’s Linking Road, with rents rising by 33%. Around the world, the biggest fall in rents was in Bulgaria with a 50% drop in Alexander Batenbeg, Plovdiv, and in Alexandrovska, Burgas.

Europe as a whole saw rents fall 4.5%. Ireland’s Grafton Street in Dublin tumbled from eighth to thirteenth, with rents dropping by 25.8%, and Ermou in Athens, Greece, plummeted seven rankings with a 15.4% rental decline.

Secondary locations showed much sharper declines due to the drop in retailer demand and consequent decline in rents, as retailers move quickly to close unprofitable stores and rein in expansion.