London is top city for real estate investing

[LONDON] London ranks as the top city for foreign real estate investment opportunity, beating out last year's winner, New York, according to a survey by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate.

The survey found that San Francisco was the third favourite city for foreign investors, with Houston and Los Angeles coming in at four and five, respectively. The US remains the most "stable and secure" country for investment by a wide margin of over 50 percentage points over second-place country Germany. This is the widest margin since 2006.

The US remains the country providing the best opportunity for capital appreciation. It also leads the ranking for planned real estate acquisitions in 2014, with nearly half of respondents projecting a modest increase in their US portfolio size and 20 per cent projecting a "major" increase.