London lures Mideast buyers

Middle Eastern investors have become the main foreign buyers in the UK's commercial real estate market, according to property agents.

While lower oil prices have damped their overall appetite for overseas transactions, Arab investors in the first half of 2009 refocused on London, their traditional overseas base, snapping up prime assets at prices that had reached 25-year lows.

Global property agent Jones Lang LaSalle says 43 per cent of overseas investments in UK hotel, office and retail property deals came from Middle Eastern investors, lured back to the market as yields doubled with the falling asset values of properties in the City and West End.