NEW YORK CITY-Organizations ranging from the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate to Deloitte have predicted it over the past several months, and now the data from Real Capital Analytics bear it out. Cross-border acquisitions in the US reached $10.1 billion over the past year, not including minority interests that foreign investors bought to the tune of $6.6 billion, RCA says. That’s a 138% gain over the year prior, although it’s only one-quarter of the volume seen at the market’s peak, according to RCA.

Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of volume is occurring in the major markets, led by the New York City metro area with $3.3 billion, or nearly one-third of the total, a figure that’s up nearly 600% year-over-year. The total doesn’t include the $485 million that Fosterlane Management, the institutional real estate arm of the Kuwait Investment Authority, is paying Hines to buy 750 Seventh Ave. in Midtown Manhattan. Houston-based Hines announced the deal late last week.

Lately, Canada has become the leading source of cross-border capital into the US, says RCA. Two Canadian firms top RCA’s list of the most active foreign buyers: Brookfield Asset Management and RioCan REIT, both headquartered in Toronto. Two institutional investors based in Toronto—CPP Investment Board and Manulife Financial Corp.—are in the top 10 on RCA’s roster. Combined, the four Canadian organizations accounted for $2.8 billion of the foreign investor volume over the past year.

Investment volume from the Americas is nearing pre-crisis levels, according to RCA. However, the firm’s special report issued last week, “Cross-Border Capital Flows into the US,” notes that Canadian and Latin American buyers have different orientations. While it’s pension funds and public companies leading the way from Canada, buyers from south of the border tend to be high net worth individuals—in the case of Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu, perhaps the world’s highest net worth individual with a fortune that Forbes magazine has estimated at $74 billion. What they have in common is a view of US commercial real estate as a safe haven for their capital.

RCA reports that “a host of first-time buyers from Asia” has been recorded over the past year as investors from this region comprise one of the fastest growing sources of capital. They include the Korea Teachers Credit Union and China’s Shenzhen New World Group. Although direct US property purchases by Asian investors tracked over the past year total about $1.5 billion, RCA points out that the figure “may be just the tip of an iceberg.” Chinese equity capital in particular is difficult to track, RCA says.

Office sales, particularly CBD assets, accounted for over half of cross-border acquisitions in the past year at $5.4 billion. However, retail’s YOY increase was the biggest among the major food groups, at 277%. An even larger YOY jump was recorded for development sites, which shot up 1181% from the year prior, according to RCA. However, with cross-border investments of just $103 million over the past year, the increase occurs within the context of a very small base.