"The reason is a combination of interest rates coming down, we feel like the market is bottoming out, and because we're starting to see a floor in prices set by buyers who are in the market," Jim Garman, GSAM's co-Head of Real Estate told Reuters in an interview at the MIPIM property conference.

Garman said GSAM had begun to deploy more cash in real estate in Europe and Japan over the past three months, without quantifying its investment. The underlying strength of the U.S. economy should support a rebound in the market there too, although he cautioned about the speed of a recovery.

"We don't think its going to be a very sharp V-shaped recovery - we think we're going to bump along the bottom for a while, as a lot of these over-levered situations in the asset class get worked through," he said.

(Reporting by Iain Withers; Writing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes, editing by Sinead Cruise)