The exit of choice high-end retail stores from SoHo signals the area may be losing its grip as downtown’s Fifth Avenue.

While the Prada store with its naked figures still looms large at the corner of Prince Street and Broadway, a number of high-end luxury retailers are being replaced by their more affordable cousins. Upscale fashion outlets Chanel and Salvatore Ferragamo are considering subleasing their SoHo stores, real estate brokers say. And there is an influx of more affordable retailers such as Forever 21 and Ann Taylor, both of which plan to open neighborhood outlets in the coming months.

“We are going to see a lot of the high-end stores leave as SoHo transforms into a neighborhood of chic stores at affordable price points,” said Vice Chairman Faith Hope Consolo of Garrick-Aug Worldwide.

“These midlevel stores are much more appropriate for SoHo,” said an executive vice president at Newmark, Jeffrey Roseman. “When retailers like Cartier first started infiltrating SoHo, they thought there was a place for the mass luxury market, but for the tourists who flock to the area, there is a big difference between picking up a pair of jeans at American Eagle Outfitters for $40 and buying a $3,000 diamond bracelet.”

“SoHo is finally coming into balance, with a mix of high-end luxury and stores for middle-income shoppers,” said the executive vice president of Studley’s national retail division, Robert Pressman. “SoHo is still very eclectic, with a luxury presence, individual, funky boutiques, and national retail, which works in SoHo because of its broad audience of tourists and locals,” said the former chairman and chief executive of Barneys.

Not every broker believes SoHo will start to resemble a New Jersey shopping mall. Some retail brokers make a distinction between Broadway, which is home to many of the national chain stores found in most shopping centers across America, and the center of SoHo, bounded by West Broadway and Prince and Spring streets, where many boutiques are located.

“Cheaper stores such as Victoria’s Secret and Old Navy will be along Broadway, but the interior of SoHo will have all the bridge lines like D&G from Dolce & Gabbana, Miu Miu, Issey Miyaki, and Barneys Coop,” said a senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis, David LaPierre.

“The point is, even if the character of SoHo is becoming more commercial, it is also becoming more desirable and rents are going up,” said the founder of retail consulting firm Davidowitz & Associates, Howard Davidowitz. “It used to be unusual for tourists to go to SoHo, but now it is mainstream, and when you go mainstream, you get mainstream.”

Mr. Davidowitz pointed to the opening of Bloomingdale’s on Broadway earlier this year, which he said fits in with SoHo as “moving in the direction of the next 34th Street.”

“SoHo has become a real estate mecca, with more footsteps and more shoppers than ever before,” Mr. Davidowitz said, adding that national chain stores were moving into SoHo rather than individual boutiques because owners of the smaller stores can no longer afford the rents.

“What used to cost $100 to $150 a square foot now costs $200 to $300 a square foot, depending on where it is,” Mr. Davidowitz said.

Rents are also the reason some luxury retailers have decided to give up their leases. Mr. LaPierre, whose company works on the Ferragamo account, said the company moved into the neighborhood at the height of SoHo’s popularity in 1999 to 2000, when the only way to obtain a SoHo address was to buy out an existing art gallery or other tenant. Rents were so high when Ferragamo and other luxury retailers moved into SoHo, that to make the move worthwhile, “it would be necessary to sell tens of millions of dollars a month in retail sales, which no one does down there,” he said.

On the Upper East Side and in Midtown, where many luxury retailers also have stores, local residents have enough personal wealth to help sustain the stores when tourism lags, whereas in SoHo, residents lack those resources. The terrorist attacks of September 11 impacted retail revenues in SoHo, the repercussions of which can still be felt, Mr. LaPierre said.

A Chanel spokeswoman, Anne Fahey, said the upscale retailer is not leaving the neighborhood. Calls to Ferragamo were not returned.