Grafton Street named 17th most expensive ‘main street’ in the world on which to rent

Dublin’s Grafton Street is the seventeenth most expensive “main street” in the world to rent on, a study by property agents Cushman & Wakefield has found.
The street slipped one place in the agency’s latest Main Streets Across the World report, with rents estimated to be an average of $310 per sq ft or €3,024 per sq m per year. This was an annual growth rate of 0 per cent, it said.
The global ranking only includes one street per country. In a separate regional ranking of headline rent prices that included more than one street per country, Grafton Street was found to be the 29th most expensive street in Europe, down from 27th.
The worldwide list was topped by Milan’s Via Monte Napoleone, which overtook New York’s Fifth Avenue to claim the top spot, marking the first time that a street in Europe has taken the title of most expensive street.
Cushman & Wakefield said the change at the top of the rankings reflected “robust” rental growth of more than 30 per cent over the last two years on the Italian street, which was further bolstered this year by the euro’s appreciation against the US dollar.
In third position, London’s New Bond Street leapfrogged Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong, pushing the latter into fourth spot despite positive rental growth this year. Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris retained fifth position, but the gap to sixth narrowed following 25 per cent year-on-year rental growth in Tokyo’s Ginza district.
The report said prime detail destinations had “for the most part successfully weathered the storm” of the steep rise in interest rates that began in 2022. Globally, rents increased by an average of 4.4 per cent over the past year, a slightly slower rate of growth than the 4.8 per cent seen in the previous year.
In the unfiltered European ranking, Rome’s Via Condotti and Piazza Di Spagna were in third and 10th position respectively. As well as Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Parisian streets appeared a further four times in the top 10, while Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse was in sixth. London’s Sloane Street and Covent Garden were in 11th and 12th spot respectively.
Cushman & Wakefield said overall rental growth in Europe had been “relatively modest”, but standout locations included Váci Utca in Budapest and London’s Regent Street and New Bond Street.