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Washington Business Journal - 2:19 PM EST Monday

D.C. stumbles globally but is still tops for real estate investment in U.S.

Barton Eckert

Contributing Writer

London has knocked Washington out of the top spot when it comes to being the best city for global real estate investors.

A survey from the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate, which has been ranking the top five U.S. and international cities since 1992, says Washington is the only city to have made the U.S. list every year. In fact, D.C. has been either first or second in all the surveys except for the year 2000.

London held first place globally in 2001 when the question was first asked, but since then has been second behind Washington.

Kingsley Associates conducted the survey for The Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate, putting questions to association members who collectively have nearly $470 billion invested globally.

The remaining global cities include New York in third place, moving up a notch, and Paris in fourth position, up from fifth. Tokyo, which made the list for the first time in 2004 in third place, slipped to fifth.

Rounding out the top five U.S. cities are New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Newcomer San Diego took fifth place.

The association points out that Washington's slight slip on the global front is more of a reflection of the world markets than it is of D.C. Washington is said to benefit from low vacancy rates, good rental growth and a good capital appreciation rate.

Making strong showings among the new EU countries, The Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary remained in first, second and third place. For the first time, foreign investors ranked their top Asian-Pacific markets as Japan, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, India and Australia.