Madison, Fifth among world’s priciest office markets

Manhattan’s Madison and Fifth avenues, with rents averaging $127 per square foot, is the world’s sixth-priciest office market, Up From Eighth Place last year.

The area is a relative deal compared with London’s West End, which topped the list as the priciest such submarket with costs nearly twice that of New York, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s annual Office Space Around the World report, released Tuesday. The Big Apple also lags behind Hong Kong, Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo’s pricey rents.

“The [Madison and Fifth avenues] submarket is home to many of the city’s trophy assets, which command higher asking rents, and is a desired location for occupiers like hedge funds and private-equity firms willing to pay triple-digit rents,” Ron Lo Rosso of Cushman & Wakefield said in a statement to Crain’s.

Just behind New York’s pricey enclave are the fast-growing markets Rio de Janeiro and New Delhi, which came in seventh and eighth respectively.

New York’s Downtown submarket, which posted 17 percent gains in rental rates over the last year, ranked second only to Singapore in terms of the largest price increase year-over-year, the report shows. In the U.S., San Francisco’s financial district, Boston’s Back Bay and Washington’s East End still exceed Downtown’s average price per square foot. [Crain’s] — Julie Strickland