The Australian property market is sophisticated and highly securitized, but it is not very large, with only one or two primary markets, along with a few resource-reliant secondary markets. At the same time, Australia has sophisticated institutional investors that have been investing in property for many decades. Given historical investment habits of Australian investors and current property market conditions in the country, how active are domestic investors — and how active do they need to become — in investing in property overseas in order to meet the performance needs of their portfolios?

In early February, we held our annual Visions, Insights & Perspectives (VIP) conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., USA. The conference attracted more than 360 attendees, one-third of which were investors. On the first day, we had three executive workshops, and I was assigned a task of moderating Building a Global Real Estate Portfolio with Emerging Markets: Brazil, Russia, India, China.

While office markets around the world began 2011 strongly, a steady increase in uncertainty led to a major bump in the road to recovery taking shape during the third quarter of the past year. The outlook for 2012 is conservative as a result: relatively stable, perhaps, but slow and cautious when set against the backdrop of a weaker global economy.