PropertyExpo:The Irish are still heavy investors in overseas property, and there is no end in sight, as Kevin O'Connorfound out at last weekend's Property Expo in the RDS.

Noon on Friday. Outside the Property Expo at the main RDS hall, visitors waited for the doors to open. Among them, young parents with buggies, some single males and a couple of dozen "country people" whose ruddy complexions are resistant to the February cold.

All are potential buyers of real estate in South Africa, Argentina, Australia, the Caribbean, Panama, Brazil, the US and 20 other territories, including old Europe, meaning France, Germany and Italy. The UK, of course, was strongly present having the facility of nearest neighbour and common property laws. And very Irish that it was mainly represented by Irish developers.

About 100 companies were there in the biggest show of its kind in the property calendar. Organised by the Sunday Business Post, the show lured sellers of apartment blocks, entire resorts in the Black Sea, business parks in Germany, hotels in America and your plain one-bedroom apartments in Spain that are an investment "for when the kids grow-up".

Sellers were there because they did well last year, writing about €150 million worth of business.

Sections of eastern European cities were already in the hands of small Irish investors. By Friday evening, a few millions more worth of recently-liberated Europe had been liberated further to the ownership of citizens of a State given bloody birth by "the men of no property". Is there no end to the mania?

"Not for the moment anyway," said Seamus Nugent, managing director of Dandara, a company owned by a clutch of DIT graduates, now transforming the urban face of Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester.

His stand was just inside the entrance, a prime spot to explain how small investors can buy bits of those cities. "As an established company, with good relations with banks, we can usually get 75 per cent loan-to-value for approved clients. Most of our residential properties are in the €130,000-€250,000 range.

"As we also do lettings and management, the entire operation is geared to the investor.

"We give a service and want repeat business, it's as simple as that," he said. By the end of the evening, he expected that to translate into "a few million pounds of business", propelled by UK stamp duties of 1 per cent.

Near him - but exotically distant - was Shanghai Vision, offering similar undertakings of investment and management. Sofie Bennett, who runs the Dublin office, was keen to emphasise the "wealth management" aspect of the business.

"We're a financial services company rather than a real estate developer. We show investors how to grow their wealth through Shanghai, which is the fastest growing city in the fastest growing economy in the world."

No quibble with that, as Shanghai's population of 20 million is set to double by 2015. New migrants need roofs over their heads and places to work and eat.

Citing US economist Warren Buffet's prediction that China will be the growth engine of global prosperity during the current century, she pointed to capital growth of values in excess of 13 per cent per annum for the past 10 years.

Her stand had a steady stream of Irish-based Chinese and Malaysian business people. Quietly spoken, discreet and numerate, they assessed possibilities. "In many cases, they are repatriating monies earned here to a part of the world they know well," said Bennett.

Companies from Germany, Poland and Hungary were among the heavy hitters, with three or four stands each, sometimes owned by Irish-born builders. Rural accents could be heard from the stands, little having changed after eight or 10 years in an eastern European country, but now giving themselves a treat in Dublin for a weekend. "I've been in Poland for six years, before that it was Moscow - all the time in building." That from SEP Marketing Solutions of Galway, offering apartments from €45,000 in Poznan, Wroclaw and Krakow.

Again, local mortgages of 75 per cent were on offer, secured against the purchased property, a recent change by banks in former communist countries. Among the "people who know property", consensus was that Germany is offering best value on the current uplift, after a downturn for the past five years. Given its enormous land mass and population density, the word is that - per sq m - German property is ripe for profit.

Clearly, some farmers thought so, to judge by the slide-rule way they compared yields at about 7.8 per cent on entire apartments blocks in Berlin, priced from €1.5 million upwards. Or how about a massive commercial building, with price tag of €9 million and a yield of 9.2 per cent? With borrowing at about 6 per cent, BG Property Consultants of Dublin was going over the figures on that one, watched by a syndicate of ranchers from Meath.

Certainly the investment monies are moving out of the country, big-time. But it's not all big money, said Damyan Barbanyanev from buyinbulgaria.com. He has apartments by both sea and mountain from about €35,000, with rental yields from lettings to tour operators.

As he was concluding a sale of three, I left for discretion. Returning, I asked who bought: "Yes, thank you. I sold three to a plasterer from, how you say, Mool-in-gar."