China and India are among the major destinations attracting strong foreign real estate investments this year, said Jones Lang LaSalle, an international real estate services and money management company Wednesday.

Although Japan remains top in Asia, India and China are both growing target destinations for investment and have the potential to be major destinations for global capital in the future, said Guy Hollis, international director of Jones Lang LaSalle's International Capital Group in a report released Wednesday.

"We believe that as property transfers between institutional players continue to build, capital inflow and outflow from these two investment hot spots will expand rapidly, creating further cross-border investment opportunities," he said.

According to the report, cross border real estate investment increased by 18 percent in the first half of 2005, totaling 237 billion US dollars and by the end of this year the total amount is estimated to reach a record high 550 billion US dollars, up 20 percent over 2004.

The Asian Pacific region is undergoing the strongest growth with the transactions value in the first half of this year increasing 45 percent over the same period of last year.

Europe remained the key destination for cross-border capital on real estate. The cross-border investment reached 52 billion US dollars, a year-on-year rise of 21 percent, but most of the transactions were between European countries.

Source: Xinhua