Google Inc. agreed to rent a former shopping mall in Mountain View, California, in the largest Silicon Valley lease deal of the year, according to Bloomberg. The former mall is being renovated into an office complex, with completion scheduled for next year, real estate investment firm Rockwood Capital LLC said in a statement. Rockwood, which has offices in San Francisco and White Plains, New York, owns the former Mayfield Mall in a venture with San Francisco-based Four Corners Properties. Once the renovation is completed, the campus will have more than 46,5 thousand square meters of office space on 11.2 hectares. Rockwood didn't disclose the lease terms, and Caroline Luz, a spokeswoman for the company with Owen Blicksilver Public Relations, declined to comment beyond the statement. Katelin Jabbari, a spokeswoman for Mountain View-based Google, declined to comment on the lease. Mayfield Mall was the first air-conditioned, enclosed shopping mall in Northern California and was previously occupied by stores including J.C. Penney Co. The property, adjacent to the San Antonio Caltrain station, is in an area with shops, restaurants, housing and a planned hotel, Rockwood said. Google, owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, agreed in July to expand its San Francisco office space at Morgan Stanley's Hills Plaza building in what would be that city's biggest lease transaction of 2013, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said at the time. Google joins Rackspace Hosting Inc. (RAX) in using a former shopping mall for office space. Rackspace, a provider of Web-based computing services, paid US$ 32.7 million for the abandoned Windsor Park Mall in San Antonio and converted it to offices.

Here's the skinny on the city's narrowest town house: It just sold for a fat US$ 3.25 million. The historic, three-story home at 75 1/2 Bedford St. - near Sixth Avenue and Houston Street - weighs in at an underfed 92 square meters. A tape measure would only stretch to a cinched-in 2.54 meters wide in the widest rooms - narrow enough for the lankiest Knick to nearly touch two side walls at once. It's where Edna St. Vincent Millay penned her Pulitzer Prize-winning "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," in 1923-24. It's Millay who famously coined the phrase, "My candle burns at both ends," suggesting that the poet would have had to orient any such candle longitudinally while working long hours at the address. Other celebrities who have traipsed - carefully - through the gaunt flat are actor Cary Grant, and, before him, John Barrymore. Anthropologist Margaret Meade also lived there, as did popular children's-book writer Ann McGovern, author of "Stone Soup." After moving out, McGovern wrote "Mr. Skinner's Skinny House," a picture book about a man who moves into the thinnest house in the city and then struggles to find a roommate. "For seven years, I lived in the narrowest house in New York. It was only eight and a half feet wide!" McGovern said in a Q-and-A on her Web site, annmcgovern.com. "It's known as the Edna St. Vincent Millay House." "Once I saw a man who was standing in front of the house with arms outstretched," she said. "'Hey,' he said. 'I'm as big as a house,' and he was." Living in her "doll house," as she called it, McGovern said she'd begun noodling about the sorts of characters who could never live in a house so narrow, including an actor who plays Pinocchio - one of the characters in "Mr. Skinner's Skinny House". The latest buyer is George Gund, according to city property records. Although thin, the home's worth has expanded over the years. It was purchased in 1994 for US$ 270 thousnad by architectural preservationist Christopher Dubs. He sold the home in 2000 to Steven Balsamo for a cool US$1.6 million. Then, three years ago, the home sold for US$2.175 million through Corcoran broker Alex Nicholas. That buyer never moved in, instead sinking more money into the place by renovating it top to bottom - the kitchen trapdoor, leading to the basement "recreation room," has been retained. Built in 1873, the three-bedroom home also features floor-to-ceiling French doors opening to a tree-shaded. The inside is more light and airy than its width would suggest thanks to a third-floor skylight and oversized windows. The gussying up allowed it to rent for a healthy US$ 14 thousand a month. It then went back on the market at an overly optimistic US$ 4.3 million. By last year, the asking price had whittled away to US$ 3.495. The thinnest house in the world built between two tower blocks in Warsaw, Poland. The house measures 1.2 meters at its widest point and 71 centimeters at its narrowest. The building has been designed by Jakub Szczesny.

As reported Russian media citing the Newsweek Poland edition, Poland Military Property Agency sold Europe's longest building - Modlin Fortress in Modlin near Warsaw. The auction winner development company offered for the lot about US$ 5.6 million. The owner company plans to build several new buildings and to turn the fortress into hotel or tourist center. According to the auction rule the owner company must ensure free access to the number of historic buildings and the reconstruction of these sites will take place only under the authority's control. The first stone of the fortress was laid in 1807 by Napoleon. Then, in 1830 there were erected 2.25 kilometers long barracks. For their construction were used 200 million bricks. In 2003 the castle was transferred to the Poland Military Property Agency. Since 2008 Poland Military Property Agency has held 8 auctions, but due to the preliminary high price (US$ 70 million) all auctions failed. Barracks in Modlin Fortress ranked fourth in the list of the world's long buildings. The first three places are - the Grate Wall of China (8852 km), Fort Ranikot in Pakistan (35 km), and Klystron Gallery at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the United States (3,073 km).

One of the country's most important Jacobean houses that has been used as a police training college for decades has been put up for sale by the Home Office for US$ 38.5 million. Built in 1612, Bramshill House, near Hook in Hampshire, boasts a lake, two chapels and world-class training facilities, not to mention the 329 bedrooms. The Home Office says it is selling because the historic mansion and its 300-acre grounds cost US$ 7.7 million a year to run, but the police have been heavily criticized for their lavish spending on the historic estate. The Home Office has used the Grade I-listed property, which at nearly 4 thousand square meters would be one of the largest homes in the UK, since 1953 as a training center for police. The site also houses the British National Police Library, the largest policing library in Europe, the National Missing Persons Bureau, and the Serious Crime Analysis Centre. The mansion, which was built between 1605 and 1615, has a long gallery, chapel, lounges, a mezzanine and a number of 'magnificent state rooms' which have now been converted into banqueting halls. Away from the Jacobean mansion, there are a number of purpose built buildings which include two bars, 58 staff houses, two restaurants, a sports hall and 231 en-suite bedrooms.

The Spanish government has approved a plan to sell of a quarter of its state-owned properties in a bid to raise hundreds of millions and boost the government's empty coffers. In plans approved last week by Spain's cabinet, some 15 thousand properties - from office buildings to agricultural land - will be put up for sale over the next seven years. The measure is the latest in a series of moves to bring Spain's budget deficit to within the EU target of 3 percent by 2016 from 7.1 percent of GDP last year. A parliamentary commission has drawn up an extensive list of assets that will be sold to private investors in the hope of raising millions to reduce its public deficit. Among those being offered include disused army barracks, an aerodrome on the island of Minorca, a military shooting range and thousands of office buildings. The government said the portfolio will include around 10 buildings "considered unique" that it hopes will be snapped up by potential investors. Among those is a mansion house on Madrid's central avenue, the Paseo de la Castellana, that used to house the Secretary of State for Security, and a country estate in Andalusia comprising 35 thousand acres of natural parkland planted with cork trees. Mariano Rajoy's conservative government announced plans last year to set up a commission to draw up an inventory of all state-owned property and identify those that could be sold off. The first properties to go under the hammer include the former headquarters of RTVE, Spain's state television and radio channel in Madrid and Galicia, and a disused army barracks in Seville. The government has not yet released the portfolio of properties for sale over the next seven years or said whether they will be sold by auction or by public tender. The government is yet to outline how much money it hopes to raise in the asset sell-off. Last year Spain's government raised 90 million euros in sales of state-owned buildings that had lain empty and made a further 37.5 million euros saving by renegotiating rental contracts. Much of the rural property that will be put on the market will be offered with the opportunity for development to create local jobs. For example, La Almoraima, a finca in the Natural Park of Alcornocales, which has been owned by the Ministry of Environment since 1983, is being sold with the option to develop a resort with two golf courses and a five-star hotel. Several months ago Greece's cash-strapped government also detailed its plans to sell 28 state-owned buildings on long-term lease, including tax offices, ministry buildings, and the main police headquarters in Athens.