NEW YORK CITY-New York City has reined king as the world’s largest commercial property investment target despite political uncertainty and turbulence in global finance and debt markets, new research from Cushman & Wakefield shows. At year-end 2011, New York’s commercial real estate sector led the globe with $35.7 billion in property investments, beating out London with $29.2 billion and $22.6 billion in Tokyo.

While investor sentiment was mixed for much of 2011 as concern about the Eurozone crisis offset emerging positive news about US fundamentals, ultimately, investors began a modest move up the risk-reward spectrum in the latter portion of the year, as evidenced by an uptick in retail activity and increase suburban office property in top metro areas, says Greg Vorwaller, global head of capital markets at C&W, in the report.

“Consistent with what we saw globally, there was a flight-to-quality in the Americas with investors focusing on best in-class assets in flagship markets,” Vorwaller says, noting that cities like New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago benefitted from a renewed sense toward safety and liquidity.