Probably the best way of doing this is through the European Commission's comprehensive Internet site
www.europa.eu.int/comm/index_en.htm which supplies frequent updates on news concerning EU accession countries.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is a major property investor in Eastern Europe and details of its projects are worth following at its website - www.ebrd.com/about/index.htm

Follow the money by investigating where major EU investment programmes are taking place. The kind of money available is capable of turning an economic backwater into an area with the potential for a real estate boom.

An influx of EU cash on this scale can generate new employment opportunities and new businesses, which in turn, of course, stimulates demand for real estate and, therefore, leads to price inflation.

Those areas that benefit most from inward investment, whether it is EU cash or private money, are likely to be some of the places where real estate investors have the best chance of seeing the most attractive returns on their money.

Vast sums of money are not just coming from the EU; private money is also pouring into the eight countries.

In Slovenia, for example - a tiny state of two million people - the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) for 2002 alone - well before EU accession - was 10 per cent of GDP, or just under $2 billion. That is almost equivalent in one year to the total amount of FDI for the previous ten years!

Real estate prices in some parts of the East European Eight were responding to the EU accession even before it took place, and they certainly have done since.

Some people have even argued that, in many places in Eastern Europe, anyone considering investing in real estate has already left it too late.

But if past patterns of investment flows of private capital are anything to go by, those people are making a mistake.