Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui was the world’s fourth most expensive shopping district this year, dropping one spot from a year earlier amid shop vacancies, though it remained the ritziest destination for retail therapy in the Asia-Pacific region.
Rents in the area, a haven for tourists, rose 7 per cent from a year earlier to US$1,607 per square foot in 2024, real-estate services company Cushman & Wakefield said in a report released on Thursday.
New Bond Street in London, which was ranked fourth last year, surpassed Tsim Sha Tsui, as its rents rose 13 per cent from a year earlier to US$1,762 per square foot.
The global list was topped by Via Montenapoleone in Milan, where rent per square foot rose 11 per cent to US$2,047. That was followed by the shopping thoroughfare of Fifth Avenue in New York, which was at the top of the heap in 2023.
But in the Asia-Pacific region, Hong Kong was still king. High street shops in Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay ranked first and second, followed by Tokyo’s Ginza district, where rents were US$1,186 per square foot. Central, where rents were US$721 per square foot, ranked eighth in the survey.
“High street retail rents in the four core districts, Tsim Sha Tsui, Central, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, bottomed out in 2023,” said Rosanna Tang, the executive director and head of research at Cushman & Wakefield in Hong Kong. “Rents in these locations remained within the single-digit growth range of between 3 and 6 per cent year-to-date as of the third quarter.”