New York’s Fifth Avenue has World’s Priciest Retail Rents

An 11-block slice of New York’s Fifth Avenue has displaced a shopping district in Hong Kong as the world’s most expensive street on which to rent retail space. That’s according to real estate consulting firm Cushman & Wakefield’s newly released “Main Streets Across the World” report, which said rents on Fifth Avenue (between 49th and 60th streets) averaged $2,000 per square foot/per year.

Hong Kong dropped out of the top spot to second place, with Tsim Sha Tsui district overtaking Causeway Bay in 2020 to become the city-state’s most expensive precinct, with rents of $1436 per square foot/per year.

Within the Americas, all but one of the top 10 most-expensive markets are in the U.S. Here are the rankings of those markets, including New York at the top:

Based on such findings, the report says “‘retail apocalypse’ is no longer the term du jour. While we still face economic volatility, the conversation has shifted to retail’s future — an omnichannel world in which the most successful brands understand their customers on a new level and meet them where they are.”

Download the full report here.