Survey: Foreign Property Investors Like U.S. Best

An organization of foreign investors announced in a survey released Sunday that the United States will remain the top choice of most global commercial real estate investors in 2012, even though it's lost ground to No. 2 Brazil.

The United States offers the most stable and secure option in commercial real estate, even though investors said improvement in rent and occupancy growth and the repeal of a 1980 foreign investment tax would have the strongest impact on their investment decisions, according to the 20th annual survey of Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) members.

Members who responded to AFIRE's survey hold more than $874 billion of real estate worldwide, including $338 billion in the United States.

Sixty percent of respondents said they plan to increase their investment in U.S. real estate in 2012, but that is down from a record 72 percent last year.

For AFIRE, it is the 20th such survey. See the full story as reported by Reuters.