The country isn’t created equal in drawing property dollars, however. About two-thirds of all the investment into the US has been into one of six major gateway markets, with Manhattan taking up 40%. Other cities popular for other countries have been Miami, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston. Cushman & Wakefield recently released a study showing that New York City ranks number one as the world’s fastest growing city for commercial real estate investment, bumping out London. Foreign investment totaled about $1.7 billion in the city in the third quarter.

Canada continues to be the most active investor into the US, with about one-third of all acquisitions, according to the RCA report. However, US acquisitions by investors based in China and Hong Kong increased by $1.5 billion in Q3 2011 from a year earlier, with South Korea also boosting its US investment to more than $1.1 billion for the year, the report said.

The Middle East has also been spending in the US, including a recent $600 million spending plan by Kuwait Finance House for purchasing health care real estate in the United States. London-based Grosvenor Fund Management partnered with the Kuwaiti firm on the investment. Doug Callantine, president and CEO of the US-based Grosvenor offices in Philadelphia, tells GlobeSt.com that overseas investors see the US as a favorable market, but that caution should still be exercised in this economy.

“Most interest is limited to a few top markets in core assets and there is a concern that prices had gotten too high in these US markets during the first half of the year,” he says. “As a result, many have stayed on the sidelines in the last 90 days. Our advice to overseas clients is to be cautious in looking to buy these types of assets at the recent high prices. The desire to expand into the US is still quite great but exercising buy discipline is very important at this time.”

The outcome of the European debt crisis, while gaining recent assurances from Germany and France, is still up in the air, with Slovakia Tuesday blocking a Euro-backed measure to expand a financial rescue program. Though US stocks have rebounded in the past few days, further uncertainty about Greece and other weak countries in Europe could further dry up capital.

Iryna Pylypchuk, associate director of EMEA capital markets research at CBRE, tells GlobeSt.com that as the debt crisis grows, global investment into the US will still not rise past the 15% mark.

“The rebound in values in the prime real estate sector in the US has meant that overseas investors, particularly those from Germany, see less value in the US market as a relative global destination, especially given the current economic fundamentals,” Pylypchuk says. “While the strong fundamentals of countries like Germany, Sweden and Poland may currently look attractive to US investors, this is not necessarily the case the other way around. Taking into consideration current uncertainly and a shift away from currency risk by European investors, we would not expect much European capital going into the US in the near term.”