An increased investor appetite for global investment has generated a structural market shift observable since the mid 1990s. International or cross-border property investment has boomed, and indirect property investment (investing through securities and funds) has become commonplace. Through a simple model, this paper relates the number of funds targeting particular countries to population and GDP per capita. We find that both GDP per capita and population explain the number of unlisted funds targeting emerging markets. However, some countries received less FDI than our model predicted. This paper addresses the issues arising from this observation by providing a review of academic theories which suggest that a combination of formal and informal barriers limit investment in developing economies. We then confronted these theories with practice, by means of a survey of investors and fund managers.