Australia is a hotspot for Asian property investors, ranking most popular for Indonesians, and second most common investment destination for Malaysians, Singaporeans and Indians.

The survey by Anglo-Asian bank HSBC of 7,245 affluent individuals across seven Asian nations found 37 per cent currently owned an overseas investment property.

HSBC's study provides a rare insight into the amount of Asian investment coming into Australian property and which countries it is coming from.

In many nations, the most popular investment destination was a neighbouring country (as with China - Hong Kong and Singapore - Malaysia).

However, beyond these neighbourhood ties, Australia was near the top of property investment choices for most nationalities.

Amongst the wealthy Indonesians who owned an investment property overseas, 19 per cent had one in Australia, beating out Singapore and the USA as top destination.

The highest proportion of Australian real estate ownership was in Malaysia, where 26 per cent of overseas property investors held homes Down Under, but neighbouring Singapore was the most popular locale for overseas real estate, at 36 per cent.

In the other nations surveyed, 19 per cent of Singaporean overseas property investors held Australian residential real estate, 18 per cent of Indians, 10 per cent of those from Hong Kong, 9 per cent of Chinese and only 5 per cent of Taiwanese.

However, as China and India have much larger populations than other nations in the study, the absolute number of investors would be expected to be much higher.

HSBC Australia's head of mortgages, Alice Del Vecchio, says the main driver of Australia's popularity is its relatively close proximity to Asia and the perceived quality of life, which 71 per cent of survey respondents ranked higher than that in the US or UK.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 2 seconds 4 m 2 s HSBC research shows 37 per cent of high wealth Asians own foreign investment properties ( Michael Janda ) Download 1.8 MB

"Good education, good health systems, all of this came through in the survey, we know from our existing customers, even things like clean air and the living standards are really important to these customers," she told ABC News Online.

"Don't think that they're just coming here to invest, a lot of them are looking for longer-term, where am I going to retire to ... this isn't necessarily a short-term investment opportunity."

This means that many Asian property investors are not looking for financial returns as much as for a place to live and, while HSBC did not ask how many of these investment properties sit vacant when the owner is not there, Alice Del Vecchio says her experience with the bank suggests many are not rented out.

"We know it's a mixed component," she said.

Interestingly given the recent discussion of Chinese investors buying in the Sydney and Melbourne markets, the survey found a quarter of Asian investors looking to buy in Australia over the next year intend to buy in Queensland, 23 per cent in the ACT, 20 per cent in Victoria, 18 per cent in New South Wales and 16 per cent in Western Australia.

HSBC speculates that this may be due to the combination of cheaper real estate prices in Queensland than in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as some of the lifestyle factors that people look for in retirement.