NEW YORK CITY-When AREA Property Partners’ global chief executive officer Lee Niebart asked a small audience of CRE professionals whether they’d invest capital in Europe, only a few lowly hands went up. “That presents a challenge,” Niebart said, during a panel discussion held by Property Investor Europe magazine at DLA Piper’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters on Tuesday morning. “At the end of the day, our business is not to make stupid mistakes,” he added. “We have to be somewhat defensive when nobody raises their hand to invest in Europe that we have to be very, very careful in what we do.”

The panelists discussed the benefits--and risks--of European commercial real estate investment amid economic turbulence and sovereign debt issues. Despite those problems, Robert White, founder & president of New York-based Real Capital Analytics said property sales are performing well in Europe, showing $32.2 billion in investment during the third quarter alone.

Much of the activity, White said, is driven by Asian and Canadian capital in the UK, France, Germany and Poland. “It is probably just the tip of an iceberg,” he said, adding that one of the biggest things that separates Europe from every other market is a high proportion of institutional capital. “It is causing this risk aversion and the defensive acquisitions, the institutions still comprise about 50% of the European buyers,” he said. “We are starting to see an uptick in the cross-border activity within Europe and that capital is much more willing to explore a greater array of markets. Capital is flowing, and London is capturing the greatest portion of that, and Germany increasingly so, but it is still centric on the major markets.”