The two sectors of the commercial property market that offer an investor the best potential for growth and leasing yields are grade A office and retail.

Grade A office space is increasingly in demand and rising in demand in line with the amount of inward investment coming to the Ukraine. This demand is especially intense in central Kiev and is leading to an investor’s potential client base looking outside the city centre limits for alternatives. There are a number of projects in the planning stages and a few have broken ground so an investor can get in early – alternatives include buying up substandard stock and investing in its improvement before leasing it to the awaiting market.

In terms of retail – well, Ukraine has a shortage of retail space per capita when the nation is compared with any other European country and this has drawn strong focus already from many international companies seeking a market with huge room for expansion. The best bet for an investor is getting access to funds targeting this sector to alleviate massive capital outlay or simply buying single units in malls for leasing for example. It’s an expensive sector to get a foothold in but it is one likely to reap an investor substantial reward over the medium to long term.

All in all the best way to describe property investment potential in Ukraine in 2007 is massive opportunity for long term gains in a broad range of property sectors.

It’s a well known fact that real estate property assets held for the medium to long term make solid additions to an overall investment portfolio and that our home is often our number one asset in terms of its value…which is why there has been a steady increase in the number of people around the world considering investing in property.

General media reports relating to investing in property tend to focus on how to afford a given property, which countries have developing real estate economies and where most buyers are headed this year in search of the lowest cost, highest appreciating property assets. But few if any focus on how an investor can actually make money from a given property market.

Questions such as ‘can you make money from tourism if you buy in the Czech Republic’, ‘what about local demand for housing in The Ukraine’, ‘is the government going to make buying easier now Romania and Bulgaria are in the EU’ and ‘will this mean more local buyers want resale property stock’ are never raised when really, these are the first and most important questions an investor should be asking!

After all, it’s all very well reading online that prices for properties for sale in Dubai have risen dramatically year on year since an announcement was made that foreigners can own freehold property assets in the emirate and then quickly hunting out some real estate that you can afford to buy and hoping to reap dividends - but did you know that there are infrastructure problems now affecting Dubai and lowering the appeal of property in the emirate and that questions about affordability are starting to be asked, suggesting properties in some areas are over priced?

You see, it’s all very well us wanting to invest in property and the media writing in general terms about all these random nations around the world where there is supposedly the potential to make a fortune from real estate - but how do we actually go about deciding whether there is a target client base likely to demand our property after we have invested in it?

Potential property investors not only have to do their due diligence on which countries have an active real estate marketplace but they need to determine if these countries offer them political and economic stability, the right to own freehold real estate and the right to take profits derived from property out of the country. Research has to be done relating to real estate taxation, tax on rental income and tax on capital gains, and even more importantly than this, a potential investor has to look at a country’s property market and determine how they can profit from it.

Is it right to buy to let, is it wise to buy to rent to tourists, should one be buying up rundown stock and renovating for resale or buying off plan assets and flipping them upon completion? These are the questions an investor needs to ask if they are to find the best real estate property investment potential around the world.