The company was announcing its 2006 Real Estate Transparency Index, a study covering 56 countries and territories round the world.

Thailand, however, was shown to have fallen behind the world trend and ranked along with the Philippines as a "semi-transparent" market showing no meaningful improvement.

The index is designed as a strategic tool to help participants in real-estate markets develop and refine strategies for global investment or corporate expansion. Markets are ranked in one of five tiers, ranging from tier one (highly transparent) to tier five (opaque), in accordance with the availability of investment-performance indexes and market-fundamentals data, listed-vehicle financial disclosure and governance, regulatory and legal factors and professional and ethical standards.

"Since the first publication of the Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate Transparency Index in 1999, we have charted gradual improvement in a number of transparency measures, but progress has been especially rapid in the two years since we last produced it," said LaSalle Investment Management's global investment strategist, Jacques Gordon.

Overall, two-thirds of the countries exhibited some or significant improvement since 2004. Fourteen countries moved up a full tier, and many others earned higher transparency scores while remaining in the same tier. None slipped back.

In the Asia-Pacific region, more than half of the countries studied had improved in transparency.

Jane Murray, head of research for the Asia-Pacific, said the global focus on accounting standards had affected many countries, and the opening up of many Asian markets to international competition had accelerated both the adoption of global practices and publication of market information in English.

Australia and New Zealand remained the shining examples of real-estate transparency, not only regionally, but also globally. Together with the US, they took the top spots as the most transparent countries, followed closely by Canada and the UK.

Hong Kong and Singapore emerged as tier-one (highly transparent) countries for the first time. Both markets are highly regarded for their ability to meet global accounting and governance standards.

Japan and India showed the greatest improvement in transparency, with both moving up one tier.

Japan rose from tier three (semi-transparent) to the lower end of tier two (transparent), bolstered by an availability of market information, improvements in taxation transparency and the enforceability of contracts.

India's improvement from low transparency to semi-transparent was helped by an availability of market information, improved general accounting and reporting processes and substantial improvement among market participants in contract enforcement and legal relief.

China also showed a slight improvement in transparency and now sits at the top of tier four (low transparency).

Its improvement was attributed to enhanced accounting and corporate governance practices in meeting more stringent international standards and an increased availability of market information in English.

Transparency improvements for Southeast Asian countries were generally smaller than for the rest of Asia. Thailand and the Philippines did not experience any meaningful improvements, while Vietnam remained the only Asia-Pacific market classified as "opaque".

It was ranked together with Venezuela and Egypt as one of the least-transparent real-estate markets in the global survey.

Suphin Mechuchep, Jones Lang LaSalle's managing director in Thailand, said the main reason why Thailand remained in the semi-transparent tier was the lack of information on real-estate transactions in the market.

Major sales transactions in particular tend to be kept confidential by either the sellers or the purchasers.

However, the company believes the trend will change, as more companies and institutional investors are listed and required by law to disclose such information to the public.

Jones Lang LaSalle's report this year on global capital flows noted that direct commercial real-estate investments in the Asia-Pacific reached a record US$67.5 billion (Bt2.56 trillion) last year, up 46 per cent from 2004.

Cross-border investments grew at an even higher rate of 56 per cent, to $19.7 billion.