London Tops List for Foreign Investors

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The city of London offers the best opportunity for foreign real estate investment, Reuters reports, citing a new survey from the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate.

London surpassed New York, last year's top city. San Francisco was the third favorite city for foreign investors, followed by Houston and Los Angeles, the survey found.

With four cities in the top five, the U.S. remains the most "stable and secure" country for investment, beating second-place Germany with a wide margin of 50 percentage points - the largest margin since 2006, Reuters reports.

The U.S. topped the list for capital appreciation opportunity. It also led in planned real estate purchases in 2014, with almost 50 percent of survey respondents planning a modest increase in their U.S. portfolio, and 20 percent predicting a "major" increase.

"Foreign investors' continued and growing interest in the U.S. real estate markets reflects fully functioning capital markets for both debt and equity that provide access to a broad range of investment opportunities," AFIRE Chairman, Steven Hason, also the managing director of Americas Real Estate for APG Asset Management U.S. Inc., told Reuters.