Welcome to Smuggle Me

Everyone has been saying that the Las Vegas Real estate market is a buyers market. I didn’t really believe them. Now that we’re searching for a home, I’m becoming a believer. About a year ago, the cheapest home we could find was $270,000 and that was not negotiable. You just had to take the price they gave you. Our realtor has now done a search for Las Vegas homes and she got like 171 to choose from. That’s a decent number of homes to choose from. Plus, it looks like we can bargain with the price too. My guess is we should be able to negotiate somewhere between $10-15k off the listing price for the home. I guess we’ll see how it goes. Some people probably won’t budge.

We’ve already gone to see 4 homes in Las Vegas and Henderson. There was one home that was on the higher end of our price range and also had $150+ a month in home owners association fees. I knew that it wouldn’t be a place we’d want to live. Turns out I was right. The bad part was that the home had one of the most incredible views. Not to mention the hot tub in the back yard. I could just see Kristine and I sitting in our new hot tub in our backyard enjoying the beautiful view. Oh well, there were a ton of other things wrong with the house. It’s too bad that such a wonderful view has to be wasted on such a crappy house.

I must admit I’m still very nervous about buying a home. There are so many factors that you have to consider when buying a house. Price being number 1. I expect with the Las Vegas Real Estate market, we are almost guaranteed an increase in equity in 3-5 years. I guess we just have to have faith. I am a little concerned about the Las Vegas high rise condos that are popping up like rabbits. I would never want to live their personally. I want a home, but that doesn’t mean that a flood of high rise condos won’t affect the price of my future home.

I’m not sure I can think of many things I like more than traveling. I’m trying, but so far nothing really comes to mind. I love seeing places. I’ve already got a trip to Italy planned in 2 months and I also am almost confirmed for a trip to Hawaii in November. However, 2 days ago I had a phone conversation with my friend who lives in Cyprus and I couldn’t help but think how much fun it would be to have Cyprus Holidays.

That Dialaflight website is pretty cool because it is a website that employs people who have actually been to the destination. I think this is a great feature of a vacation site. I know that I can tell people some really unique places to visit in Italy because I’ve been there and lived there. Same goes for Hawaii. It’s just different if you’ve been there. You know what to expect. You also know what not to expect.

Here’s a list of places that Dialaflight has information from people who’ve been there.

Algarve
Amsterdam
Athens
Barcelona
Berlin
Bruges
Brussels
Budapest
Cologne
Copenhagen
Cyprus
Dublin
Florence
Geneva
Hamburg
Helsinki
Istanbul
Lisbon
Madrid
Majorca
Malta
Marbella
Milan
Moscow
Munich
Naples
Nice
Oporto
Oslo
Paris
Prague
Reykjavik
Riga
Rome
Salamanca
Seville
Sorrento
St Petersburg
Stockholm
Tallinn
Tenerife
Valencia
Venice
Verona
Vienna
Vilnius
Zurich

I put the places I’ve already visited in bold. Not nearly enough. I think I might just want to take this list and make it my to do list of places I want to visit.

This post sponsored by dialaflight.