As reported by news agency Reuters, the building of the 12,000-seat basketball arena for the London 2012 Olympics has been completed. The temporary stadium took 15 months to build and is the fourth venue at the Olympic Park to be finished, with a test event to be held there in August. The 115 meters long and 35 meters high, the white-clad arena is one of the largest temporary venues ever used for an Olympic Games and will be dismantled afterwards to be reused elsewhere. Building began in October 2009, with work to erect the 1,000-tonne steel frame starting in March 2010. The venue, completed on budget (US$ 69 billion), will hold the Olympic Park's first test event when six top men's teams (Britain, Australia, China, Croatia, France and Serbia) play in an International Invitational tournament from August 16-21. Other Olympic Park venues already finished are the main stadium, the velodrome and the handball arena.

According to Arabian business, Britain's rich are selling up and moving out of central London, replaced by super-wealthy buyers from regions such as the Middle East, China, and India, new research found. Real estate consultancy Savills said foreign buyers inject some US$6 billion into London property each year, the bulk of which - US$ 4.4 billion - is used to snap up homes in billionaire markets such as Mayfair, Kensington, and Chelsea. The biggest spenders in the capital come from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, putting down US$ 10.3 million on average. Buyers from the Middle East and North Africa are among the biggest spenders on high-end property, holding a 10 percent share of prime central London real estate and with an average spend of US$ 6.7 million, Savills said. By value, MENA homeowners hold 13 percent of London's most expensive property. Indian buyers, who make up nine percent of all buyers, spend US$ 5.7 million while Chinese, widely tipped as the next group to arrive in force, spending US$ 3.7 million on average. The British spend, on average, US$ 2.5 million on prime London property, Savills said. As reported by Arabian business, UK owners are disinvesting and moving out of the central areas, taking their equity with them. Central London is becoming more international as these (foreign) buyers tend to hold their stock for longer than their UK counterparts. For example One Hyde Park, the UK's priciest real estate project, has sold nearly a quarter of its apartments to wealthy Arab buyers. Between 20-25 percent of sales were to Middle East buyers, with the cheapest apartment in the development costing US$ 9.2 million.

According to Arabian business, Dubai, the Gulf business hub where property prices continue to decline, cancelled 217 property projects in the past two years. The Real Estate Regulatory Authority reviewed more than 450 projects and expects 237 of them to be completed "in due course," according to information contained in the Dubai government's bond prospectus. The total value of property sale transactions plunged to US$ 32.6 billion at the end of last year from US$ 41.7 billion a year earlier. Residential property prices in Dubai, the worst-performing market in the Middle East for the past three years, haven't yet benefited from political turmoil in other parts of the region, Deutsche Bank AG said last week. Home values declined 1.2 percent in May from the previous month and rents fell by 1 percent, according to the bank. Apartment prices dropped 1.3 percent and villas lost 1 percent. "Despite talks of renewed interest in real estate following regional unrest, there is no visible sign of an improvement," the analysts wrote. "Even if we believe the worst of the downtrend is now behind, new supply, lack of homebuyers' appetite and anemic transaction activity point to further weakness."

According to Reuters, Qatar, host of the 2022 soccer World Cup, plans to offer the first tender for its railway and metro system in the next three months. Preliminary designs had already been prepared, said Abdullah al-Subaie, managing director of the Qatar Railways Company. Subaie said the total cost of the Qatar railway project will reach US$ 35.7 billion and that more than 1.2 million tonnes of iron would be required for the project. There will be a total of 100 stations in the project. He did not give details about the size of the contracts, but said they would include a tender for digging tunnels and setting up stations for the network. Subaie said work on the system would start with the metro and its first phase will be ready by 2021, one year before the soccer World Cup. The entire project would be completed by 2026. Qatar's copious natural gas reserves have turned it into an economic powerhouse and the world's richest country per-capita, and driven its bold ambitions. The tiny Gulf Arab state has allocated 40 percent of its budget between now and 2016 to infrastructure projects. These include $11 billion on a new international airport, $5.5 billion on a deep-water seaport and $1 billion for a transport corridor in the capital, Doha. It will spend $20 billion on roads. The world's top liquefied natural gas exporter, spared by popular unrest sweeping the Arab world, plans to spend over $125 billion in the next five years on construction and energy projects. Subaie said he urged Qatari companies to build partnerships with international firms to work on the construction of the project.

According to Daily Mail, the most expensive country house in the UK has gone up for sale for US$ 122 million. Updown Court has 103 rooms, five swimming pools, two penthouse apartments and a helipad. It stands in 234,7 thousand square meters of grounds. The enigmatic owner behind Updown is bricklayer's son-turned-property developer supremo Leslie Allen-Vercoe, 67. His company Rhymer Investments purchased it in 2002 out of receivership for US$ 32.8 million - and has since spent at least US$ 49 billion on renovation work. Now, an Irish bank has requested a drive to sell the mansion with a new price tag which reflects the vast sums ploughed into it. The neo-classical California-style mansion was built in 2002 on the site of an earlier property which was owned during the 1970s by Prince Sami Gayed of Egypt. The original Updown Court was built in 1924 and had been left as a shell after it had been damaged by fire in the Great Storm of 1987 - when a tree apparently fell and ruptured the gas main. It was subsequently acquired by two investors who themselves were bankrupted and Mr Vercoe then stepped in. The house, which has 24 bedrooms and 23 bathrooms, has been built with some of the world's rarest materials - mainly Italian marble. Visitors approach the mansion, which is 30 miles from Central London, along a heated marble driveway. The mansion has a 50-seat cinema, a two-lane bowling alley, a gymnasium, a squash court, a flood-lit tennis court, a lake, a wine cellar for 3,000 bottles and a 'panic room'. Neighbors include Sir Elton John and Queen guitarist Brian May.