DTZ's Nick West

If you didn’t believe us when we published the report of a 150% foreign-investment hike for the UK in 2004, maybe you believed news of the record $520-million sale that appeared on our homepage last week. Nevertheless, the fact of the second bears out the truth of the first, which was based on research from London-based DTZ. The UK has been hot, and US and Irish investors led the charge, said the report. But while the numbers were eyebrow-raising, they were also skewed, frankly, due to such ultra-high-ticket deals as the Songbird buy of Canary Wharf. In an exclusive follow-up interview, Nick West, international investment director of the property adviser—-which boasts 193 offices in 46 countries—-explained how that trend is likely to shift and what the global landscape looks like for investors, well, internationally.

GlobeSt.com: A 150% increase in foreign investments in the UK? Why?

West: It really just bears out some long-term trends. The UK was one of the first markets to attract overseas investors for a number of reasons: the scale and depth of the market–it’s the largest investible market in the European arena, certainly. We’ve also got unique lease contracts, which are generally long-term, 10 to 15 years, typically with triple-net lease provisions, so effectively the gross receipt is the net receipt and there are no nasty surprises. Also, we are quite transparent. All of those factors combine to make an attractive environment. In fact, we put together a matrix that compares global investment destinations, and the UK always scores very well for those reasons.