Miami's Lincoln Road remained the fourth most expensive retail street in the Americas, according to Cushman & Wakefield's new Main Streets Around the World survey, which tracks 462 of the world's top retail streets and rates them by their prime rental value. These rents were similar to those registered a year ago.
The 28th edition of the report also includes a ranking of the 71 most expensive streets in the world, one for each country. According to this year's survey, rental increases were seen on 36% of all streets studied. villa
"Both taking rents and demand from global retailers have been steadily increasing on Lincoln Road," said Senior Director Greg Masin. "While the street remains a highly important and required touch point for the retailer with the customer, retailers are under pressure to control fixed costs and re-evaluate their models and how they best meet the consumer."
"As a result, we've seen a slowing of transaction velocity on Lincoln Road, as well as a flattening, and in some cases reduction, of asking rents," Masin added. "In the short term, we expect this pattern to continue."
Wall Street continues to put enormous pressure on publicly traded apparel chains in the United States to become more profitable, which has meant closing underperforming stores, cutting overheads, and raising margins. This trend has had an especially negative impact on the high street and mall sectors in the United States, and it is expected to continue in 2017. There has also been a slowing in demand from multinational brands searching for flagship space in New York, with the few newcomers being highly selective in their site selection.
"The Americas region has benefited from stable consumer spending that has been sustained by steady jobs and lower energy prices during 2016," said Gene Spiegelman, Vice Chairman, Head of Retail Services, North America at Cushman & Wakefield. "This has been a consistent pattern since 2015, and we expect it to continue in 2017."
"For 2017 and beyond, the greater question would be the unrelenting rebalancing of revenue origination - bricks and mortar versus e-commerce," Spiegelman said. "Global brands seeking concrete relations with consumers will continue to support the urban retail industry, while enclosed malls and open air shopping centers will face increasing pressure to improve their shopping experiences and distinguish their market positions in order to sustain competition in the ongoing evolution of the 'bricks and clicks' model."
According to Cushman & Wakefield, New York's Upper 5th Avenue remains the world's most expensive retail lane, narrowly ahead of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay, but rental prices in both have declined as brands balance the demands of physical and online presences.
Upper 5th Avenue and Causeway Bay are both more than twice as expensive as the leading street in any other region, with annual rents per square foot falling for the first time since the financial crisis.
Third place goes to Paris' Avenue des Champs-Élysées, with annual rentals of $1,368 per square foot; fourth place goes to London's New Bond Street ($1,283); and fifth place goes to Tokyo's Ginza, with annual rents of $1,249. The only other upward mover in the top 10 was Seoul's Myeongdong, which rose one spot to eighth.