As it turned out, the gas & electricity supply was sooooooooo easy to sort out. We've done it all by e-mail and the utility companies have been so helpful.

We have contacted our proposed carpet suppliers, to arrange them to come and measure up, and then remove the old (yukky) carpets and fit the new, and then we can go buying furniture. Anyone out there understand US cable TV hookups?

An update on what has happened since we closed escrow.

We went out in late May, to redecorate recarpet and furnish the new place. Mrs Sancho went a week ahead of me and had almost completely repainted the entire place in the week before I arrived. She had also arranged with the carpets company and they had been, measured up and made a follow up appointment to come and remove all the old carpets and lay the new ones - a great deal, the entire place done for under $2000.

We bought almost all the furniture from one store 'AAA Penny Bargain' on Pecos. The manager there was great, and we spent an entire afternoon wandering around their FOUR warehouses, picking the furniture. We then sat with him, and haggled................. eventually, with lots of "I'll round this down from $399 to $200" and "forget paying for delivery that's free now" and "buy these two table lamps, and I'll give you the others free"...... we came up with a total bill of $7200 - to furnish the entire condo.

On the Tuesday after I arrived on the Saturday, they came and took up all the old carpets, and laid the new one - lovely it is too. We went out Tuesday afternoon and spent $$$s on mundane things like cutlery, glassware, crockery etc etc......mad how much those items add up!

We also bought the TVs - a big 32" LCD for the living room and two 19" LCDs for each bedroom. Then on to Cox Cable to sort out the cable TV input. A huge queue at their office, but an easy process.

Wednesday the furniture arrived; two guys unloading the van and humping all the new stuff up to our 1st floor condo. Once they had left, we unpacked the new TVs, plugged them in, connected up the flylead to the cable inputs and bingo! we had 75 channel cable TV in three rooms, each independent of the other.

we lived there happily for the next 10 days, met some of the neighbours and so on.

Since we came back, some of the bills have been arriving, and you may be interested in how low they are. We get both electricity and gas bills monthly. For the three and half weeks we were there, the electricity bills neatly fell around the trip, so we could judge pretty accurately what we used while we were there. The bill for that month - and the air-conditioning was on 24/7, and of course we used things like TVs,lighting etc.,- was $61. about half of that was charges and taxes etc, and only about $30 was for useage. Subsequent bills - and the fridge/freezer is still running, and there are two lights outside which come on at dusk and go off at dawn - have been in the region of $16 a month.

Gas bill - we have a gas hob, and (curiously) a gas tumble dryer, both of which we used a lot - the highest was $31 and subsequent bills - all that's on is the pilot light on the boiler - are around $13, and of that only $2 and some cents is for useage.

the Water bill - (like the UKs water rates) was $240 for the year, and the local property tax bill (like our council tax) arrived today and was for $873 again for a full year, 1 July to 30 June.

So it's all working out much more economically than we anticipated.

that is really interesting. I am so glad its working well.

Ok, an update 1 year on (my, how time flies)

We've been back out a couple of times since we bought, and all is well. The bills are continuing at roughly the same level as previously reported, except we have had the annual assessment for the taxes, which falls due in June. The assessment is based on current values, and with the fall in property values we're looking at maybe $550 this year.

We are now in the vey long queue for 'green card' immigration visas. The foms are filed with USICS, and we have the matching reference numbers and filing date record. We have a filing date of 16 November 2009............for our class of visa they are currently processing filing dates of on or before January 2000, so we have a bit of a wait.

What we do currently is:
We have around $10,000 in our US Bank account, from which we pay the bills, online. (Although we owe that account $2000 as we used the cash card to pay for our onboard spend on a cruise last December) We each put £50 a month away, and whenever we go to the USA we change that into $$s and pay that into the account, and that more or less keeps the bills paid without eroding the balance.

Next jobs to be done are:

renew the window blinds
change the vinyl flooring in the bathrooms and kitchen to ceramic tiles

In due course we want to replace all the kitchen appliances, but not for a year or two.

Thanks for the update. It must be completely different now you have a residence rather than staying in hotels.

luci

It is a totally different experience now, and we see a completely different side to LV, and we are learning a lot of the 'locals' tips!

That said last time we were there we had an offer for The Venetian at $118 per night, including all sorts of extras and discounts, so we treated ourselves to a couple of nights of luxury on the Strip! ( Big problem is that although we can be on the Strip in 15 minutes, we can't have a drink if we've driven in, as LVPD are hot on DUI)