International real estate: An institutional approach

Hong Kong has offered a grandstand view of three strands of economic development over the past decade that has demonstrated an urgent need for a better understanding of international real estate transactions. The first arises from the opaque yet frenetic behaviour of real estate markets in south and east Asia during the 1980s; followed by the second: the wasteful consequences of an uninformed rush of international capital into Asian real estate markets that were patently too immature (institutionally) to stand the strain of such rapid expansion; and third, the burgeoning interest in investing in the emerging (but still immature) market economy of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The need for a more informed way of analysing and investing in unfamiliar real estate markets gave rise to this book.