Thank you for your question. I love real estate and have been dealing in this business for almost 20 years now across the world. I've personally invested in quite a few countries around the world and have learned a good deal of this business the hard way.

It's always important to have a good broker on the floor and good management that can help you can returns from your property. But most of all, since you are looking at investing out of your home country (probably), the main issue is that you should not be cheated.

The truth is that it really depends on your needs and business. If you are looking at buying a properly and relocating to that place, then you would have to consider which timezone suits you the best and we can take it from there.

However, if you are looking at this project strictly from an investment point of view, I would always focus now more on the west and main cities (New York, London, Paris, etc). You can get good properties that under a good management could give you good yearly returns.

One of the reasons I am discarding the far east now is because of the initial problems we are seeing in the asian markets. The prices are very high there and could be approaching in a few years a real estate bubble.

You should take this into account in order to insulate yourself from a property crash and seeing how your investment loses value.

Now, once again, if your idea is live it and keep it (ie, not rent it) and let it appreciate in value, then think about how long would you want to keep it (10 years - 20 years) as the lifespan of a property investment goes along with economic cycles.

All in all, I still think the best places where to invest in properties now are civilzed first economy countries (USA, Canada, England, France, Germany and even Spain).

If you want to expand, we can arrange for an expert call. Just book a time that suits you and we can look into it more deeply.

Thank you and best of luck with your investment.

Try New Zealand - it has a first world economy, they speak English, it's an easy place to do business and lots of overseas buyers are already in the marketplace.
If you want introductions I already work with a couple of realtors and a property manager who'd look after residential investments for you.

I've been in the real estate business for 14 years and own 14 real estate offices in the US. My advice is to buy real estate in areas with a high concentration of universities and hospitals. For example, Boston & New York City, are home to great medical and college facilities. Areas such as these hold their value because teachers/nurses/doctors are a higher than normal percentage of the work force and this shields unemployment numbers by a certain degree in times of recession. As well, when you are near colleges and hospitals, there always seems to be demand for real estate.

Several years ago I created my own process for calculating the "best" community to relocate to. It is highly customizable - the math is entirely based on the criteria of the user and leverages publicly available information. If weekend golfing means everything to your quality of life it gets measured - if not, then the number of local courses is irrelevant to your personal metrics.

Given all the previous answers (all of which are very good) you may still find you have a choice between several high quality locations and no easy way to compare them.

If you'd like help narrowing down a final choice using my custom method feel free to arrange a call.

Arizona USA is a darn good choice...beautiful clean cities like Scottsdale and Phoenix...sunshine all the time...and you can get quite a flat or a home for that price...