According to a new report, Hong Kong is the most expensive city for global retail rentals, as retailers seek to profit from the city's rising luxury market.
Hong Kong's retail rents topped CBRE's global rankings by a wide margin in the second quarter of 2013, reaching $4,328 per square foot per year. With 51 new luxury retailers opening stores in the last year, the city has the largest representation of luxury retailers in global markets.
According to Joe Lin, executive director retail, Hong Kong, CBRE, "healthy tourist arrivals and a shortage of sufficient space make finding an adequate unit in Hong Kong's prime retail locations a big challenge for new and established retailers." "Demand for spaces with these characteristics continues to be solid, bolstering the market's high and rising prime rent levels," says the report. buy property in qatar for expats
The average retail rent in New York was $3,050 per square foot, while the average retail rent in Paris was $1,220 per square foot.
According to CBRE, prime retail rents increased in four of the top ten markets: New York, London, Zurich, and Tokyo, compared to just one market the previous quarter. According to the consultancy, prime rents in Central London rose 9.1% from the previous quarter and 20% from the previous year, owing to a supply and demand gap on New Bond Street and Old Bond Street.
Tokyo's prime rentals increased by 2.0 percent in the third quarter, owing to low supply and rising confidence.
"Thanks to an improving economy, consumer demand and trust conditions have significantly improved," Junichi Taguchi, managing director of CBRE's retail services division in Japan, said. "Luxury retailers have noted a positive push in demand for brand products, which have been recording high sales prices in department stores since the beginning of the year."
China's richest man is a property tycoon.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, China's richest man is now Wang Jianlin, the owner of China's largest commercial land developer, Dalian Wanda Group.
Mr. Wang is worth $14.2 billion, which is $3.2 billion more than Zong Qinghou, the founder of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, China's third-largest beverage company. Mr. Jianlin's company paid $2.6 billion for AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. last year.
"With some high-profile acquisitions, Wanda leads Chinese enterprises in expanding their business internationally and catering to consumers' demand at home," Kenny Wu, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Ji-Asia Research Ltd, told Bloomberg. "Wang's decision to diversify away from Chinese real estate seems to have paid off."
According to Bloomberg, Mr. Jianlin owns 100% of Dalian Wanda Group. The company has $48 billion in assets and $23 billion in annual revenue. According to the company's website, the company operates 71 "Wanda Plazas," 38 five-star hotels, 6,000 movie screens, 57 department stores, and 63 karaoke venues throughout the country.
Dalian Wang's second-largest asset is his 100% ownership of Wanda Department Store Co., which is worth $5.6 billion.
The company revealed last month that it had purchased a construction site in London for a £700 million hotel and residential tower project. Sunseeker, a British yacht designer, was acquired by the company for $1.6 billion in June.