Asia’s steady recovery from the global economic crisis continues to impress onlookers and those active in the market — and China has justifiably garnered much of the attention. The growth potential and lure of what some Asian real estate markets have to offer is all but impossible to ignore, but risk is still a natural part of Asia’s investment landscape.

Conventional thinking has been that when the West sneezes, the East catches a cold. So what happens if the West gets pneumonia, or worse? Certainly Asia was not immune from the global economic downturn precipitated by a U.S.- and U.K.-led housing collapse that quickly morphed into a far more viral financial contagion. The dysfunction of the capital markets that followed the collapse of Lehman Bros. had far-reaching implications and still is being felt more than 18 months later.

But a funny thing has happened since that time, and conven