Asia is where the action is both for property fund managers and the investors they serve. But the financial crisis has revealed significant problems in how they interact. How are the risks and the relationships best managed so funds and their backers both emerge happy from Asia’s property boom?

“There’s gold in them thar hills” again, it seems, when it comes to real estate. And just as the highest mountains are in Asia, so too are the biggest pots of gold.

This year, there is US$329 billion — a third of a trillion dollars — available for investment into property globally, according to DTZ. Around one-third of the money, US$104 billion, is targeting the Asia Pacific region, a figure that’s up 45 percent in just six months. (It’s not clear if that will be affected by March’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.)

But how will it be invested? The global financial crisis revealed great discord in the relationship between property