Rents in Hong Kong, home to some of the world’s most expensive shopping streets, are forecast to fall by up to 20 per cent this year as luxury retailers suffer because of the corruption crackdown and economic slowdown in mainland China.
Surging Chinese demand for jewellery, watches and designer goods sent rents in Hong Kong’s most famous shopping streets rocketing in recent years, overtaking New York’s Fifth Avenue, Paris’s Champs-Élysées and London’s Bond Street.
But as lower Chinese spending started to hit rents, Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay lost its crown as the world’s most expensive retail district to Fifth Avenue at the end of last year, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a property agency.