"There's a price for locals, a price for foreigners and a price for the Irish, " said Hugh Campbell, tax and legal adviser with PriceWaterhouse Coopers.

His experiences in continental Europe tell him that the perception of Irish investors is that they're prepared to pay top prices. "Clients love it when the Irish and Israelis are sniffing around, " he said.

Campbell said he'd acted for commercial investors who were willing to pay over the odds for of"ce blocks in western Europe, but that retail investors are generally poorly armed with research or savvy when considering investments abroad.

"People will agonise about where they're going to spend their holidays, but give no thought to spending 100,000 or 150,000 on a property. They spend more time agonising over a pair of shoes."

Campbell said investors can also get caught out by failure to take into account the local tax and legal situations. He added, as an expert independent adviser, that the best way to maximise return is to hire an expert independent adviser.

Others have also begun to notice that there may be no Irish for caveat emptor. Last weekend the Observer newspaper followed a group of Mayo investors buying apartments in Berlin. The article quoted bemused local property experts, pointing out that Berlin's economy has shrunk each year since 1996 bar one. The Mayo investor dismissed such trivial matters as the concerns of German business types who were, "too conservative".