NEW YORK CITY-"What does it mean to be an internationalist in real estate?" asked David Scribner Jr., president of Scribner & Partners, moderating a FIABCI-USA New York Council seminar last night at the New York Helmsley Hotel.

An appraiser would have to conduct property valuations in enough countries before truly being considered international, continued Scribner, whose firm offers real estate counseling and economist expertise. "But the minute you move money into another country, you immediately become international." And that is happening more and more, he added; in Europe alone, for example, cross border real estate transactions in 2002 were five times than just five years earlier. "You have money moving all over the place. It moves quickly--faster than you can think about it."

The seminar, "International Real Estate--Working with Foreign Banks and Investors," gave its audience a taste of what is happening in the commercial real estate industry around the globe.

Even if you're a US real estate executive who doesn't work on overseas projects, you need real knowledge of the international real estate market to give your clients the best advice, suggested one of the evening's panelists, Alexander G. Hesterberg, managing director of real estate valuation for Deutsche Bank. "You can't possibly know the value … of real estate anywhere, in any major city, without knowing what's going on globally," he said.

So what is happening globally? As another panelist, Cushman & Wakefield's EVP of international operations, John R. Coppedge III, noted, open- and closed-end German funds are by far the most active of overseas investors in the US. And in Europe, German and US investors are dominating, accounting for about 50%, or a total of approximately 10 billion Euros, of European real estate investments in 2003. The French market beat out the UK in terms of attracting foreign capital for the first time last year, he said, while Spain, Italy and Belgium, and to a lesser extent, Sweden and Central Europe, also proved attractive markets for investors.

But the next real "hot bed" for international real estate investment is Moscow, said Coppedge. Along with the risks that Russia represents, it can also offer sweet rewards--15 to 20%, compared to typical returns of 4 to 7% in major European markets. Moscow "is a market today that, as far as Europe is concerned, everybody's talking about."

China is another location where the opportunities are "unfathomable," Coppedge continued. Rockefeller Group International, Cushman & Wakefield's parent company, is preparing to launch a big development project in Shanghai's CBD, making it one of very, very few foreign entities to gain a presence in that city's property market. "There's a lot of interest in China. You're dealing with a Communist country, you're dealing with a country where you can't own land," Coppedge noted, adding: "I believe it is really the wave of the future…and I think it's sustainable."

The evening's other featured panelist, Alastair J. Murdoch, principal in real estate valuation services firm Williams Murdoch Inc., spoke about a number of international valuation organization and initiatives. Global standardization in this arena is important, Murdoch said, "so that we can provide consistency and transparency for international clients."