Indian cities offer Asia's best real-estate investments next year says a new survey as Canadian pension funds and asset manager pour millions into the sub-continent.

The new survey has ranked Bangalore and Mumbai as the region's top picks, vaulting both Indian cities to top a table of 22 Asian markets.

The survey, compiled by the Urban Land Institute with input from PricewaterhouseCoopers, cited a boom in business process outsourcing, or BPO, and IT firms that are driving demand for new office space, reported Bloomberg.

"There is little doubt that catering to the expansion requirements of the Indian BPO industry has delivered big profits to investors who arrived early on the scene," said a report summarising the findings of the survey.

The two cities ranked 12th and 13th last year and were close to the bottom as recently as 2014.

Last month, in one of the largest transactions in the Indian commercial real estate segment, Canada-based Brookfield Asset Management agreed to buy nearly 4 million sq ft of office and retail assets in the Mumbai suburb of Powai for a deal that will be close to $1 billion.

The deal is said to be the largest purchase of commercial assets in Mumbai to date, as international investors, including Blackstone and GIC, as well as China’s Fosun and Dalian Wanda, increasingly turn to the subcontinent for high growth opportunities.

The deal is Brookfield’s second major property investment in India, and the latest of several moves by the asset manager in the subcontinent.

In 2014 Brookfield agreed with Unitech Corporate Parks to pay $525 million for a subsidiary of that Indian developer which held 100 percent of four special economic zones and 60 percent of another two of the office park developments. Brookfield later went on to buy out the remaining 40 percent equity in the two remaining projects.

The Canadian firm also got involved in Indian infrastructure just over a year ago, buying six road and three power projects from India’s Gammon Infrastructure Projects in a joint venture with a fund controlled by India’s Kotak Mahindra Capital. In July of this year Brookfield Asset Management also signed a preliminary agreement to buy about $1 billion in Indian distressed assets through a joint venture with the largest lender in the South Asian nation.

India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who visited Canada earlier this year, said institutional like the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), have been investing in Indian realty assets for the last few years.

The CPP Fund, for instance, controls nearly US $225 billion and it hosted a meeting for the finance minister. He pointed out that in the past 24 months or so, Canadian investors, including pension funds, have invested nearly $12 billion in India.

While the new survey touted Indian cities, Tokyo fell from first place in the 2016 rankings to 12th for next year, reflecting growing discontent with the effect of Abenomics on a long stagnant market.

Singapore, which ranked first in the survey in 2011 and 2012, fell to 21st for next year, down from 11th, the result of what PwC calls a "perfect storm" for the local property market. That includes 12 straight quarters of declining prices in the residential market, as well as a sputtering economy that contracted in the third quarter.

The Singapore Government has been steadfast in its commitment to cool the housing market, maintaining real-estate curbs rolled out since 2009.