LONDON, Dec 7: The risks are growing but the US subprime crisis was just what the booming global real estate market needed to avoid a bigger and more damaging bubble further ahead, leading property investors and analysts said on Friday.

In speeches and subsequent panel discussions, the main message from the Reuters Real Estate forum on the 2008 global outlook for commercial property was that the industry needed to “keep a cool head” as assets re-priced because investor interest in the asset class could not be taken for granted.

A spokesman for Australia’s Queensland Investment Corporation in the audience said it had a “war chest” ready to invest in UK commercial property, where it saw some fair value emerging and was “maybe 2 to 3 per cent away” on price.—Reuters