Aug 15 Real Estate numbers

Two interesting articles about real estate today:
One is a list of real estate value growth, compare to the same data surveyed from Aug 15 2004, it shows the housing price get record growth in this year. There are 10 cities get more than 30% growth, surprisingly Durham was No 9. DC/MD/VA area get 27%. Raleigh-Cary area is in the distant bottom of the list, very modest 7.4%.
Top 10 growth cities
Metropolitan Area State Growth Median Price
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale AZ 47.0% $243,400
Cape Coral-Fort Myers FL 45.2% $266,800
Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville FL 40.0% $204,000
Orlando FL 36.5% $232,200
Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice FL 34.3% $367,800
Reno-Sparks NV 32.1% $357,400
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach FL 31.7% $371,600
Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach FL 31.2% $194,000
Durham NC 30.9% $198,500
Tucson AZ 30.0% $228,500

for a full list, click here.

The other is a list of cities are overpriced. According to Celia Chen, economist for Economy.com, there could soon be some major pullbacks in the most heated regional housing markets. DC/VA area counts for No 3 and No 4. Of course, no NC city in this list.

Top 10 overpriced cities
1 Fresno, CA 26 Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, CA
2 West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, FL 27 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
3 Bethesda-Frederick-Gaithersburg, MD 28 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI
4 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 29 Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL
5 Bakersfield, CA 30 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
6 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 31 Worcester, MA
7 Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, FL 32 New York-Wayne-White Plains, NY-NJ
8 Visalia-Porterville, CA 33 Essex County, MA
9 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta, CA 34 Rockingham County-Strafford County, NH
10 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA
for a full list, click here.

Add comment August 17th, 2005

Jet Li can act! Movie review “Unleashed”

Wow, what a surprise! It is so different from all other Jet Li movies in the past, in a good way! I feel so happy for Jet Li after I finished the movie “Unleashed” aka “Danny the Dog”. This is by far the best acting movie delivered by Jet Li, it totally shattered my “stereotype” that he is just a fearless fighter, and definitely puts Jet ahead of Jackie Chan in terms of acting.

In the movie, Jet Li plays Danny, a very small Chinese guy who was treated, as the movie name suggested, like a dog by his masters. The master fed him, sheltered him, and made him believe only the master cared about him. The master used hime as a pet to compete with other “pet” in order to get money. All of his “normal” life changed after he met Sam (played by Morgan Freeman) and his step-daughter, he got treated like family memebers. This total change helped him found his true past and recovered his true himself.

The fight scene is short but real intense. No too much wire scene that you normally see from normal marshal arts movie. The good story gives Jet Li very good opportunites to show his acting skills, Danny has two sides of personality: cruelty and innocence, a very big contrast and sometimes very humours. We enjoyed the movie much more than any other past pure action movie from Jet Li.

Add comment August 13th, 2005