Parking fees to drive you broke Author: Mark Phillips Date: 20/07/2006 Publication: The Financial Review
The cost of a parking space in Midtown Manhattan has broken the $US500 a month mark for the first time (about $670), driven by a rise in office occupancies, according to a study by Colliers International.
While Midtown's monthly parking rates are the highest in the US, they are only the fifth-highest in the world.
London's West End is the highest, at $US898 a month and $US59 a day. Central London and Tokyo had higher monthly and daily rates than Midtown Manhattan, while Hong Kong's monthly rate was higher and its daily rate was lower at $US26.
And if rates in New York are rising in parallel with the office rents, the same phenomenon does not seem to be at work in Australia.
Any rise in the rate in Sydney or Melbourne is more likely to be attributed to increased rates, charges and levies.
The Colliers survey found that the average parking rate in Sydney was $654 a month and $51 a day.
It found that the cost of monthly parking in New York rose alongside demand for office space in the area.
The median rate for an unreserved spot at a Midtown office building was $US574 a month, up 17 per cent from $US492 a year earlier and almost four times the US average, Colliers said.
Midtown Manhattan's office vacancy rate dropped to a five-year low in the second quarter as investment banks added space, and rents topped $US50 a square foot ($719 a square metre) for the first time in four years, New York-based Cushman & Wakefield said.
"It really does seem to move almost in perfect sync with the office market," Ross Moore, director or market and economic research at Colliers, said.
In Australia, some car parking spaces are sold on strata title. Stephen Kovacs, associate director of investment sales at Colliers in Sydney, said rates ranged from $600 to $900 a month in the north of the CBD.
Strata car park sales are rare, with the most recent being in April in a 10-level car parking station at 251 Clarence Street for $90,000.
It last traded in 1998 for $58,000.
Mr Kovacs said the availability of commercial car parking for monthly lease in Sydney had tightened since the city council restricted developers to one space per 50 square metres of site area.
In Melbourne, rents range from $300 to $500 a month, with a median of $400 per bay.
The average casual daily rate is $15 for early birds, or between $6 and $8 an hour.
Matthew Stagg, investment sales associate at Colliers in Melbourne, said a 53-bay station at 601 Little Collins Street recently sold for $2.4 million, or about $45,000 a bay.
The Victorian government introduced an annual congestion levy of $400 a bay for 50,000 off-street and commercial spaces on January 1. The levy will double next year.
Its aim has been to discourage city workers from driving to the CBD. "That cost has been passed on by the operators to people renting the bays, and so it's had little effect on the actual returns for operators," Mr Stagg said.
with Bloomberg