Our Home In El Paso, Texas

One of the biggest reasons my wife and I had for returning to the United States from Australia was the collapse of the housing market.  We had been thinking about getting into the housing market for years and we have decided to hold off because we had figured the housing market was inflated.  We actually came very close to deciding to buy a home in Australia as well, but by doing our research we felt the Australian housing market was inflated as well.  When the housing collapse happened both my wife and I were greatly relieved because if we had bought a house in the area we were looking at back in Washington State we would have been hammered by the loss of value in the home.  Since we held off from buying we had saved up a very large down payment for a home and with the collapse of the housing market now was the time to buy real estate in the US.  So we packed up and moved to Texas and bought a home here:

It is great being a home owner and my wife and I are really enjoying our home that we got at a great price from the seller who we talked down by $20,000 because he was so desperate to sell his home.  We have so far been enjoying our new life here in West Texas, which neither of us are from. I have lived outside the US for so long now that everything here actually feels new and fresh now.  So it is great to be back and I will be blogging about being back in the US as well as continuing to blog about Australia, which by no means is behind me as work commitments will ensure I remain involved with Australia and many other places in the world I get to travel to.