Today

New York's famous Fifth Avenue is the world's most expensive shopping street, a new report has suggested.

The average rent on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan rose by 8 per cent in 2005 to nearly $11,000 per square metre per year, according to Main Streets Across the World 2005.

In second place is Causeway Bay in Hong Kong, which leapfrogged Paris' Avenue des Champs Elysées.

"The international race for space is continuing unabated," said Darren Yates, a market analyst at the company behind the report - US commercial property agents Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker.

"A growing number of global brands are vying for limited space on the pavements of the world's top shopping destinations, whether Paris's Avenue des Champs Elysées or London's New Bond Street. This in turn is pushing up rents."

Main Streets Across the World 2005 tracks retail rents in the world's top 237 shopping locations across 47 countries around the world. The report's global league table is drawn up by taking the most expensive location in each of the countries monitored.

Only 18 locations out of the 237 monitored in the report show a fall in rents in local currency terms, with the remainder either seeing rents stable or growing.

On a regional basis, rents increased fastest in Asia Pacific, with Hong Kong's Causeway Bay recording 90 per cent growth year on year, followed by Tokyo's Ginza district, a favourite with cross-border luxury brands.

Some of the strongest rental growth has also been in São Paulo in Brazil, where the best shopping centres have recorded rental growth of up to 40 per cent.

The biggest rental rises in Europe have been in Købmagergade in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, where rents have gone up 40 per cent in local currency terms.

Outside the Nordic region, rents in Budapest's main Váci utca high street, Moscow's Novy Arbat Street and London's New Bond Street have all gone up 25 per cent when measured in local currency.