In today’s unsettled global marketplace, investors are seeking refuge and opportunity in cross-border real estate investments. For Asia Pacific investors, the troubled markets of Europe and the United States keep beckoning. Longtime investors from Japan and Singapore are being joined by newcomers from Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea and elsewhere. Asia Pacific institutional investment in the United States has increased recently, as has intra-regional Asia Pacific investments. But apart from the United Kingdom, Western Europe has been giving investors a case of the jitters, and investment there slowed in 2011. What challenges and potential rewards do Asian investors face when going cross-border?

Asia Pacific real estate investors have been looking more and more to developed markets in the United States and Europe to place their money. “There has been a slow but steady increase in the flow of capital from Asian investors,” says Bill Thompson, man