Rents on Rodeo Fall in Rankings

Rodeo Drive rents lost ground this year in a worldwide ranking of the most expensive pockets of retail real estate, according to a study released today.

Rents in the tony Beverly Hills shopping district between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards ranked 32nd out of 223 locations in the year ended June 30, compared with a ranking of 17 out of 221 locations the year before.

Nationwide, the street’s rents remained the sixth-most expensive, the same ranking as last year, according to the annual report by Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate services firm based in New York.

Annual rents on Rodeo Drive were, on average, $220 per square foot in the more recent period, compared with $240 the previous year, an 8.3% decrease.

But the lower worldwide ranking is more a reflection of rising rents elsewhere than of sliding rents locally, a spokesman for Cushman & Wakefield said.

According to the study, the world’s highest rents were in New York, on Fifth Avenue and on East 57th Street, where retailers pay $700 per square foot annually, ahead of Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris, where rents were $577.

The strongest growth worldwide was in central Kuwait City, where rents surged 180% to $104 as more Western-style shopping centers were built, the report says. In the U.S., the heartiest growth was on New York’s Madison Avenue, where rents jumped 25% to $650 per square foot.

Overall nationwide, demand remained “relatively firm despite the uncertain economic conditions,” the report says, with prime rents rising 2.9% for the year.