Every year, the World Bank produces a report on the ease of doing business in 178 countries, ranking them from 1 to 178. The World Bank uses several criteria to determine the rankings, but factors taken into consideration include the ease of hiring employees, the ease of starting a new venture to the ease of putting a company into bankruptcy.

Singapore tops the list as the number one place to start and run a business in the world, closely followed by New Zealand and the USA. The factors that helped Singapore to this slot are “Employing workers” and “Trading across borders.” Although, having recently discovered that the famous Raffles “Singapore Sling” cocktails are now automatically dispensed by a machine rather than hand made, I feel the position is unwarranted. What is the world coming to? Personally, I feel at least one of the criteria should be, “best cocktails.”

Perhaps more interesting to property investors is the top reformers report. Singapore has already been through a major property value upswing, whereas changes in the tax and property laws in places like Egypt and China will likely create a more investor-friendly environment.

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A Saudi prince has already snapped up the tower’s penthouse.

Whatever next for the Arabian city that has an artificial ski slope covered in snow even when the temperature hits 50C? Not to mention the world’s tallest building, some 700 metres (2,300 ft) high, rising above palm-shaped artificial archipelagos in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. Oh, and a growth rate of 16% and a population where foreigners in need of “luxury” homes outnumber locals.

Well, what about the world’s first rotating skyscraper?

Commissioned by the Dubai Property Ring, a firm of UK-based developers, the 30-storey apartment block will use solar energy to power 20 electric motors that will rotate the tower through 360 degrees over the course of a week.”This will be a fair building,” says Nick Cooper, the British engineer working with MG Bennet and Associates of Rotherham, which will build the mechanism. “Everybody will have the same views for the same amount of time.”

Mr Cooper is not referring to “fair” as in “funfair” - though the building is, it has to be said, the spectacular proposed centrepiece of the giant City of Arabia amusement park, complete with animatronic dinosaurs, which is due to open in 2009.

Time Residences will comprise 200 apartments. Its 80,000-tonne bulk will rest on a series of more or less friction-free polymer bearings. “It moves very slowly,” says Mr Cooper. “It is not a theme park ride.”

Will it work? Cooper has previously designed the drilling machine that bored for England and France beneath the Channel, allowing Eurostar trains to race between London and Paris. He has also designed a giant rotating rock-crushing machines for use in mines. Getting a 30-storey building to turn slowly should be a doddle. And, Cooper claims, the power required to make it spin should be no more than is needed to boil 21 electric kettles.

Rotating parts of buildings is nothing new: London’s Post Office tower, featuring one of the world’s first rotating restaurants (with a very British catering service ,provided by Butlins), opened in 1966. But, this side of an observatory, getting a whole building to turn around its axis is something else - a case of a “white hot” sixties technological dream realised in a blazing hot emirate half a century on.

The £41m building is designed by British architects at Glenn Howells Associates, the company currently converting the Birmingham Rotunda into a block of 230 flats, and the Dubai city developers Palmer and Turner.

It will be capped with a crescent-shaped Moon Lounge, which will feature a theatre and an observatory. From here, future residents may just be able to catch glimpses of the further 23 rotating towers the Dubai Property Ring plans to build in cities around the world - one for every time zone. The idea is enough to make anyone dizzy.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Related:

• AME Info Press release
• Rotating towers get Dubai real estate in a spin (Gulf News)
• Rotating tower to be solar-powered
• Scraper City discussion thread

Abu Dhabi: Damac Holding, the Dubai-based real estate developer, is planning a major investment in the Egyptian real estate market, a top company official said.

“We have been negotiating the issue with the Egyptian side for almost six months now, and the site will be finalised soon,” Hussain Sajwani, the group’s chairman, told Gulf News yesterday.

The value of Damac’s international expansion and projects has been on the rise recently, reaching almost Dh25 billion so far, including a Dh10 billion in China, and a $400 million in Qatar, in addition to Lebanon and Jordan.

“We also find the Abu Dhabi market very promising, given the huge projects that have been announced or are in the pipeline,” Sajwani explained.

“However, Abu Dhabi needs to open up to foreign investors in the real estate sector, as the government cannot carry out all the required development,” he added.

Rents in Abu Dhabi are expected to increase by 100 per cent in the next five years, as the city’s demography is expected to change dramatically, due to the need to upgrade existing properties.

Accordingly, a different tenant mix is expected to enter the market, with much higher income than that of the average middle class in the capital today, according to Sajwani.

He said rents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi would keep going up, but at a slower pace than hitherto as the market is maturing. “However, Dubai is still relatively cheap compared to similar places elsewhere in the world and prices will keep going up about 40 per cent in the next five years,” Sajwani said.

Abu Dhabi rents would also rise because the real estate sector had been neglected for a very long time and would be pushed higher by the wealth of the emirate and new developments in the sector.

Sajwani attributed the rising rents to rising investment costs as well as strong demand. Building materials, administration costs and land prices were all rising, he said.

“Foreign competition has been good to Dubai’s local developers, as it opened up more markets and introduced the emirate to the outside world. Abu Dhabi needs a similar kind of foreign exposure and its market need to mature as well,” he said.

With its project Ocean Scape in Abu Dhabi, Damac is the only Dubai-based developer carrying out projects in the capital city, and the company is planning to further expand in that promising market with a new sales office there to cater for its ambitious plans.

Source: gulfnews.com

Related links:

• Official Damac website
• Oceanscape Abu Dhabi

Emaar Properties, the Dubai-based international property major, has won a keenly-bid auction sale of prime land in Egypt from the Egyptian Government Tourism Company. The company intends to build a master-planned community of residences, commercial units and leisure facilities with emphasis on tourism.

Dr Nader Mohamed, Executive Director – International Operations, Emaar Properties, said, “An emerging market with strong economic fundamentals, Egypt is of key importance to Emaar Properties in building the company’s international portfolio. Committed to developing value-added projects in the country, Emaar will embark on an ambitious US$1.74 billion (EGP 10 billion) development on the 7-km strip of tourism resort land that the company has won in a keenly-bid auction on August 5, 2006.”

Emaar has already announced other major projects in Egypt including a 80-acre development in association with the Egyptian Government for an integrated community based in the new Smart Village; another master planned community at the highest point of downtown Cairo; and a Memorandum of Understanding with the Artoc Group for Investment and Development on a waterfront redevelopment project for the Alexandrina Bibliotheca.

Source: GoWealthy.com