In days of old, property people went off to Europe to buy second homes: Tuscany, the Dordogne, the costas. Anywhere further afield was decidedly dodgy. Everyone made lots of money and had lovely holidays into the bargain.

Earlier this decade, that all became rather old hat and was replaced by a new idea: eastern Europe was the place to buy, whether Bulgarian ski resorts, Croatian beachside villas, or, indeed, entire islands off the Dalmatian coast. Everyone made more money and had more lovely holidays.

Now we are witnessing a third era of foreign investment. And, this time, we are being encouraged to look at Asia, where prices, we are told, are not falling, yields are high and the air always smells of rose petals and vanilla. It’s not such an easy holiday destination, admittedly, but apparently it’s a great place to put your money.

Last week, I attended a property seminar run by IP Global, a Hong Kong-based property-investment company that specialises in “emerging and recovering” markets. The chaps at the company are jolly excited about Asia, which, in their view, presents the triple whammy of growth, yield and affordability.

So, alongside plate-loads of canapés, I was handed a big brochure containing key facts about investments in Malaysia (GDP growth 6%, sub-prime crisis “limited”, estimated gross rental returns for a flat in Kuala Lumpur 5%-7%), Vietnam (GDP growth 8.17%, huge urbanisation, rental demand outstripping supply) and even a ski resort in northern Japan (guaranteed rent 7% net for two years, price increase of 33% in 2006, super-long winter months).

The capital outlay is not enormous: prices in Vietnam start from about £100,000 and flats in KL from £143,00. The farfetched nature of the venture seems rather delightful. The idea of buying something in Asia is so fantastically exotic, it leapfrogs over dreary concerns about Alistair Darling, the agonies over sub-prime and the Bank of England.

That’s the point, of course. Asia is so wildly foreign, we can be told almost anything about it and it will seem good. Such as that capital values have doubled in Malaysia in the past three years; that nearly three times as much snow falls in Niseko, Japan, as in Whistler; and that Vietnam these days produces plastic surgeons rather than plastic shoes.

What about more pertinent issues, such as language, tax laws, land registry, freehold and the like? Don’t you need to know about all that sort of thing as an investor?

No worries, say the chaps at IP Global. We live out there. We invest ourselves. We will do all the work for you. Just a couple of down payments and you’re sorted. Why bother with all the aggro of falling capital values and disappearing mortgages in Britain when buoyant investment is alive on the other side of the Yangtze River? The trouble is, I seem to have been here before. I’ve already attended a free seminar at a hotel in London at which the prospect was held out of affordable properties with great yields and fantastic growth prospects. The seminar was conducted by a company called Inside Track, which went into administration last week.

IP Global at least acknowledges that “prices can go down as well as up”. The tone of its sessions was just as upbeat as Inside Track’s, though, and the carrot of considerable wealth held out at every possible moment. Admittedly, IP Global doesn’t force you into coughing up thousands of pounds to attend “investment weekends”, but it wooed would-be customers with testimonials from satisfied investors, while every brochure included a personal customer application for international payments, so people could sign on the dotted line there and then.

So, would you be mad to pump your hard-earned savings into Asia? The continent certainly has plenty of advocates, but there are some dissenting voices. “Asia was last year’s story,” says Justin Urquhart Stewart, director of Seven Investment Management. “The global slump has already bitten.

“Take China,” he continues. “Growth was 11% last year, and is likely to slow to about 8%. So it’s still growing, but the effect will be like being in a car suddenly going from 70mph to 40mph. With no seat belt. A huge amount of overcapacity will be revealed. Asian property is interesting, but not yet. There will be growth in tourism, not for westerners, but for the burgeoning middle class in Asia. And that’s a story for the next decade.”

If it’s a bargain you are after, Urquhart Stewart suggests you forget about flats in Ho Chi Minh City. “I think there will be a lot of pain in the UK housing market, and, if you have access to cash, buying something in the auctions is very sensible indeed,” he says.

Indeed, the pain over here is palpable, as a recent ITV documentary showed. One of its interviewees was a woman who had bought a flat for £127,500, but was prepared to offer it up for auction in Manchester at £90,000. Eventually, it was withdrawn, unsold, at £70,000. It even came with a ready-installed tenant, who was paying £480 a month, or almost £6,000 a year.

“If one had bought it for £70,000, that’s a yield of about 8%,” says Jonathan Maitland, a reporter and former buy-to-let investor, who interviewed the owner for Tonight. The thought of snapping it up for himself did actually cross his mind. “I did the maths and I thought, ‘My God’,” he says. “If I got into property again, I would never, ever do it abroad. You might call your agent in Malaysia one day and find the phone isn’t answered. What do you do then?”

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