Australian and Canadian pension funds, in particular, have been increasing their allocations to real estate and are about to assume a much higher profile on the international property scene.

Asia, the world’s largest continent with 47 countries and approximately 4 billion people, has emerged as a major real estate investment destination. Nonetheless, not every Asian country is suitable for real estate investment. A country of institutional quality should have stable political and social systems, as well as a large or wealthy economy, or an economy with good growth potential.

Now that we are coming to the end of the year and multitudes of economists, strategists, government agencies and people standing on street corners are all offering their predictions on where the economy is heading in 2013, it would be nice if the industry had a Nate Silver to cut through the noise and let us know what is really going to happen.

In Q3 2012, the UK economy managed to pull out of the recession that it had been suffering during the first half of 2012, with GDP growth of 1.0 percent. Although unemployment is relatively high as a result of the recession, Aberdeen itself enjoys fuller employment due to the breadth of industry located there.