“Forty percent of the UK population,” claims Chris Palmer, chief executive of Cluttons Resorts, “is interested in buying an overseas property.” Tell us something we didn’t know, Chris. “The British climate continues to be the main catalyst, and cheap flights have encouraged buyers,” continues the boss of the overseas selling agency.

Well, okay, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to state the obvious: that British hunger for a place in the sun, offering tantalising prospects of both fun and profit, is unabated. Official statistics due out next month from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (OPDM) will show not only that the figure of 254,000 English overseas homeowners has doubled in 10 years, but also that the number of these properties let to tenants has increased in a year from 58,000 to 73,000.

And these days, in the immortal words of Arthur Daley, when it comes to overseas property, the world really is your lobster. According to property website primelocation.com, Brits searching its site for a foreign property still put France (37.1%) and Spain (17.3%) at the top of the popularity polls, but buyers were also looking at, inter alia, South Africa, Dubai, Bulgaria, Dubai, Cyprus, Italy and Thailand.

What is the reason for this global property fever? Who is buying, and why? There are obviously enough Brits trading in their UK homes for new lives all over the globe to keep television channels supplied with hours of programming, and a steady stream of buyers who want a holiday home with guaranteed sunshine.

But industry observers have also noted the recent rise of the pure investor, often a newcomer to the market egged on by yet more excitable television property shows, who started with off-plan schemes on the Spanish Costas that yielded tidy profits before oversupply seriously dented the possibility of selling on. Now they’re branching out in all directions, particularly eastern Europe.

The global property boom that began about five years ago had several causes. In Europe it was largely linked with the preparations for entering the euro, when interest rates went right down, kick-starting the French and Spanish markets. Then the eastern European accession countries became beneficiaries of that, moving from very risky places for your money to pretty safe bets, as the property market was boosted by a combination of falling euro-linked interest rates and rising incomes.

It’s — almost — what one market observer calls a “no-brainer”, with all the economic indicators pointing in the right direction, though there is the risk of “overshooting” and paying too much. For example, in the run-up to Hungary joining the EU, investors — local and foreign — piled into the market. But once the dust had settled, prices began to drift back down again, and the market is fairly flat there now.

And there’s another danger when looking at overseas property, for which the London market serves as a good analogy. Traditionally, north London was always more desirable and therefore pricier than south of the river. So buyers headed south, pushing up the prices, even in the grottier pockets, to the levels of the northern suburbs they had fled because they couldn’t afford them. At which point, buyers should start to look again at the areas of traditional quality and value. Or to put it in an overseas context, why get excited about an isolated Hungarian country house for £30,000 when you can still get the same deal in many parts of Italy?

The reasons for the continued desire to buy abroad are understandable. The housing boom gave people the potential to withdraw equity in properties that suddenly looked like gold mines. So the buy-to-let phenomenon was born, starting in London. When London yields turned in a downward direction, investors moved to provincial cities. As that market flattened, it was but a further small step to Prague and beyond.

When Irish investors — even more avid than the Brits — enter the picture, there’s the added factor of an expectation based on their own experience. Poor, Catholic and agricultural, Poland reminds the Irish of home — or home as it was before EU cash made them rich and their houses outrageously expensive.

Property investment also fits in with people’s growing desire to take control over their own finances. After the scandals and disappointments of endowment mis-selling, poor pension- fund performance and low stock-market yields, bricks and mortar, wherever in the world, seems like a better bet.

However, this exploding market does not mean it’s getting any easier to pick the right place at the right price, and, to echo the small print of the financial products ads, past performance is no guide to future profits.

Take Florida, which a leading investment analyst says “remains one of the riskiest investment zones, with interest rates rising fast and a widely forecast faltering in property price growth. The boom was based on extremely low interest rates. Many now fear that as they rise, the boom will cool dramatically.”

And look at Dubai. A year ago I was on a radio phone-in panel with a Dubai agent who silkily reassured a caller that developers’ claims of 22% returns were a ridiculous exaggeration: she should “realistically” expect 12%-14%. I don’t think he’d be quite so bullish now, as the desert kingdom starts to look like so many UK city centres, oversupplied with new apartments struggling to find buyers and tenants.

However, says Milan Khatri, chief economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, “the global property market in housing remains pretty strong in most locations. Like the UK, housing booms don’t necessarily end in bust”.

The Economist magazine’s latest survey of global house-price indicators reports that the majority of experts predict a “soft landing with no drop in prices”, but it warns that “property in many countries is overvalued”, which could lead to stagnation or worse. As Khatri says, “you have to go into these ventures with your eyes open. Know the local market, and get good advice.”

So where in the world is still ripe for inflation-busting property price growth? Romania, given that it has EU membership looming, is curiously neglected, and the more adventurous are starting to look — warily — at Ukraine. Still in eastern Europe, Montenegro offers the tantalising vision of pleasure and profit: an Adriatic holiday home that could make big bucks.

My industry-watcher tips Egypt’s Red Sea resorts, and says Thailand is booming. He has also noticed some activity in Belize and Brazil. “I’ve no idea if these are a good idea, but people really are going all over the place.”

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