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The survey showed that this year, eight countries moved up a full transparency tier since the last survey in 2006. Dubai, Romania, Ukraine and Russia showed the biggest improvements in transparency over the past two years.

Out of 81 countries covered by Jones Lang LaSalle's Global Real Estate Transparency Index, Thailand came in 45th, ranking after South Korea, and remained among semitransparent countries.

The index, which provides a rigorous framework for comparing the level of real-estate transparency in 82 markets around the world, shows that nearly half of the countries surveyed in 2006 demonstrated a significant improvement in their transparency score. 

Transparency levels are improving globally as governments seek to streamline regulatory and legal hurdles to aid cross-border movement of capital and corporate facilities. Only Venezuela posted a lower transparency score this year compared to 2006, principally due to changes in government regulations and new taxation policies targeting foreign investors.

In keeping with historical results, the Australian and American real-estate markets remain among the most transparent in the world. With the addition of new variables relating to the quality and frequency of valuations, service-charge transparency and financing transparency, Canada now ranks as the world's most transparent commercial

real-estate market.

LaSalle Investment Management global strategist Jacques Gordon said many cross-border investors were focused on more mature, open and transparent real-estate markets such as the UK, Canada, Netherlands and Hong Kong. 

Opportunistic investors will consider emerging, less mature, less open and semitransparent markets, but will require higher returns to compensate for the higher risks associated with lower transparency. Only the most opportunistic investors will consider semi-transparent markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Opaque markets, such as Algeria, Belarus and Cambodia, are still very problematic for investors as well as corporates.

A number of countries in the "frontier markets" have been included in the index for the first time, with Belarus, Sudan, Algeria, Cambodia and Syria scored as "opaque".