Today, I'm giving you a
tour of where I've been living for the past year in Queretaro, Mexico. This is in the suburb of Juriquilla inside of a gated community. You are not going to believe
how much home I'm getting and all the amenities I'm
getting for what I'm paying. So without wasting any
time, let's go inside. To get to the front entrance, you come up these
gradually-sloped curved stairs. I love the looks of this
coming to the front door here. And then you come out to
this beautiful spacious patio and this patio overlooks
Plaza Nautica right here which has like five restaurants conveniently located just
steps away from this home, and it also has these sweeping
views to the lake out here. Something else I love about this patio are these huge mature trees next here providing tons of shade. And as a matter of fact,
there's a family of raccoons that live in this tree right here. So, many nights, I see
them climbing down the tree and then they climb onto my
roof and climb down my window. It's pretty cool to see that, and Laska likes to see that as well. She's barking at them sometimes. I love coming out here and
sipping on a tea in the morning while I look across the lake here or getting a cocktail in the evening or coming out here to read a book or simply just to enjoy nature and listen to all the birds chirping. In Mexico, in order for it to
be considered a fancy home, it has to have a big ol' door. So that's what you have here. A gigantic door with an
automatic coded lock. As you walk through the front door, you're met with this huge living space with these gorgeous
vaulted wooden ceilings. I love it! But one of the best things
you notice immediately are the sweeping views out
to the golf course here. The views from this house
are amazing on every side whether you're on the
patio, in the living room, eating at the dining
table, even in the kitchen, or doing your business in the bathroom, you have amazing views from everywhere. I really enjoy sitting here. I spend a lot of my day in this chair with like a tea or something, sitting on this table next to it. And almost all the furniture in here is made out of the wood called parota. So this is parota, this
is parota, this table is, the legs of this are, and this is where my live-in
maid hangs out most of the day. She is the best investment
I've made for this house. I had to pay her a signing bonus, but since then, she has
been working for free every single day. And with all the fur that
this little one sheds, there is a lot of cleaning
to be done in here. I think this beautiful dining table really fills up the space nicely in here. These chairs
are super comfortable. I love how the table matches the bench. Again, this is parota. It also has these teal inserts
where the wood was cracked. So when they were manufacturing the table they used that to fill the cracks and I think it looks really pretty. I love that it has a
matching bench along with it. And then over here, I have
a big living room area with a huge and very comfortable sofa. There's a TV over there. That's the only TV I have in this place because, to be perfectly honest,
I don't watch a lot of TV. Although there is a
basement to this house, I spend the vast majority
of my time upstairs. I love sitting at that table over there, at that chair, or on the sofa here. It's all super comfortable and it's just a really
great place to relax and look out the window
here at the gorgeous views and watch the golfers go
by, and things like that. And next to the living room area, you have the bar top
with four bar stools here and we'll head on into the kitchen. The kitchen is actually one
of my least favorite parts of this place because the countertops are weirdly high and it's kind
of small but it's still nice. Looking out this way,
while you're doing dishes you can look out there and see the lake or you turn around and
you're looking this way and you have great views
to the golf course. So no matter where you are in the kitchen, you have great views. And then in here, there's
a nice spacious pantry that's somehow always full,
despite it being quite large. And then, in here, we
have a big ol' fridge. I have a toaster oven, an
air fryer, stove and oven, electric tea kettle, blender. And this is one of my nodes
for the wireless mesh network that I have here. Because when I originally got wifi here it didn't cover the whole house. So I had to add this mesh network to get coverage everywhere. And
this thing has been amazing! I cannot believe the coverage and the speeds that I get with it. In this home, I have
blazing fast internet. I pay for the fastest internet I can get and that is 500 Mbps. Coming outta the kitchen here and we walk around the kitchen
around the bar top area into the main guest bathroom. This is a very well lit bathroom. Again, you have the
beautiful wooden ceilings. So really nice guest bathroom area here. And then walking out here, we're going into the master bedroom. The master bedroom is super spacious, again with great views out
to the golf course here and these beautiful wooden ceilings. I have a large and really
comfortable king bed. And I love waking up every morning and hearing the birds chirping outside. Every morning at about 7:00 AM, I'm woken up to the birds chirping and this patio's a really nice place to come hang out and read a
book, watch the golfers go by. You hear the birds chirping,
the breeze is blowing. I did another home tour here in Juriquilla and I got a ton of comments
saying like, "Are you serious? You have that huge house
and there's no pool?" Well, I'll tell you
something about Queretaro is nobody wants a pool because it doesn't get
warm enough here to use it. Or like maybe you would use
it for two months of the year, but even still, in the two
warmest months of the year, it's getting down to like the
low 50s or something at night. So even in the hottest months of the year, the weather isn't warm
enough to keep the pool warm. In the master bedroom, there's
this gigantic space over here that I've never figured
out what to do with. But we walk down this hallway here and you have the biggest
closet I've ever had in a home. This thing is massive. So no matter how many clothes you have, there's going to be plenty
of space for you here. And then you have the biggest mirror I've ever had in a
house right here as well next to the closet. And right across the
hallway from the closet is the toilet area. So you can close this door
and you can open this window, and while you're doing your business you can look out here to the lake and hear the birds chirping,
which is actually really nice. And then coming out of the bathroom here, you have a really nice gigantic
mirror with dual sinks here and then the biggest shower
I've ever had in a place. This shower is massive. Look how big this thing is, it's ridiculously large. You can open this window
and you have views out here to all these flowers and trees. But yeah, so you're taking a shower and you have this view out here and you can like have
that nature experience while showering. So upstairs, you just have
the one master bedroom and then downstairs, there are two more bedrooms
each with a complete bath. And then outside in the garage area, there's a fourth bedroom
which is more or less the maid's quarters, but I've actually converted
that into a driving range to practice my golf so I'll show you that. But anyway, let's head downstairs. Coming into the first bedroom here. I have this one set up as an office. So I have a rug in here
with this chair to sit on and read a book or
whatever else I want to do. Work on my laptop. But I love the curved windows in here, I think that's a really nice feature. There's a ceiling fan like there is in every room in this house and then you have some closet space here. And coming in here you
have a complete bathroom. I don't really use this bathroom but it does have a shower,
a toilet, and a sink. And we walk right around the corner to the other bedroom downstairs. Again, it has a complete
bathroom to go along with it. I have a second wifi set up downstairs because the walls are so thick in here. The walls are made out of
18-inch thick concrete. So the wireless signal doesn't travel well between the walls. So I've one internet for
upstairs and one for downstairs. But here I have another coffee
table made out of parota, a sofa that turns into a
bed, as well as a rug here. And once again, you have this really
pretty curved window here. I always love arches in a home, that's always a feature
that I really enjoy. But walking through here,
you have some closets. And then I like this bathroom better than the other bathroom, but a sink, a shower, and
then a toilet here as well. Now, we walk out here and
head into the garage area. I think this is super pretty out here. You have this rock wall that
leads up to my front door and my patio there and then
this beautiful stone arch that you drive your car
under, coming in here. I think that's really pretty as well. And here I have a laundry room. I just have a washer so the
whole time I've been living here I've been just washing my clothes and then hanging them to dry which I don't particularly like. I would love to get a dryer. This would be the maid's quarters here, the bedroom and the bathroom. However, I have it set
up a little differently. This is where the magic happens. I can come in here and practice my golf and hit as many balls
as I want into this net. So that's more or less the house but it would be a shame
to show you the house and not show you around
inside the gated community because half of what I
love about living here is actually outside of the house. So I'm gonna show you around there quickly and then we'll come back and I'll talk about the
price of this place with you. So this is what the outside
of my house looks like after you pull in
through the security gate in this gated community. And so this is my garage right here but literally right next to my garage is access to the golf
course, which is really nice. So this access to the golf course literally goes under my living
room and dining room area. (beeping sounds) So from this angle, you
can see my home starts here and it's everything to the left of that. So this is the view of my home
from the golf course side. It sits left of the
green on hole number four at Juriquilla Golf Club. So there's golfers out
on the course right now so I can't show you too much out here but every evening after the
golfers pass hole number four I come out here with Laska
and take her for a walk. She loves running all
around on the golf course and it's just a really pleasant place to take her out with lots
of shade, nice breeze, and of course, gorgeous views. I'll go show you the rest
of the gated community here. So right here is my home. And then I turn right over here
and I'm right by the water. There's plenty of guest
parking over here to the left. I take Laska out here
all the time for walks because there's a really
pretty walking path that goes all around the
peninsula here, around the lake. And there's also super
pretty walking paths that go up into the hills
next to the clock tower here in this gated community as well. Literally just steps away from my home are about five different restaurants to choose from right here. They're all gorgeous. They overlook the lake
and these massive homes and this gorgeous canyon across the way. So those are really nice
places to go to as well. This neighborhood is located just a few minutes from grocery stores. It's only 10 minutes from the largest mall in all of Latin America
and that's Antea Mall, so that's super convenient as well. There's so much nearby! It's such a great location! But perhaps more important
to me than any of that is the peacefulness you get out here. You don't have any of the
loud noises of Mexico. I never wake up to fireworks and there's rarely parties that I hear or anything like that. Something else I really
like about living here is there's a lot of nature and there's quite a few
different animals that live here or at least stop by here. I told you about the raccoons earlier but there's also squirrels and
all sorts of different birds at certain times of the year. Pelicans come, the pelicans
come here every single year as they're migrating somewhere. And then also at certain
times of the year, there's hundreds upon hundreds
of ducks out here as well so that's pretty cool. But I love these walking paths. Laska and I come out here
just about every day, walking around the peninsula on the lake. And then as you walk around the peninsula, you get to this nice park up here just a little bit ahead of me. And there's a grilling area right here, there's a covered tent area right here where you can hold events. So sometimes people will
have birthday parties or something like that around here. But it's just a really nice
place to come take Laska. She loves running all around this grass and it's pretty cool to watch
her have fun out here as well. By the way, my favorite Spanish
course, Rocket Languages is running their independence
day sale this weekend. It's an awesome value to begin with, but it's even better if
you can pick up the course on this sale. It's going to be 60% off but it's only for the first
thousand courses sold. So head on over to TangerineSpanish.com. That's my affiliate link and
it will take you right there. Again, this weekend only, first thousand courses
sold, TangerineSpanish.com. So much of Queretaro is a concrete jungle and it's just cement
and buildings and roads and all sorts of stuff like that. But living here, you
don't feel that at all. It's like you can be out there and be by the lake or you can
be walking down this path here and feel like you're in the jungle but there's so many cool
walking paths around here. The cool paths aren't just around the lake but you come up into the hills here and there's a lot of
places to explore as well. A lot of the Americans and
Canadians who move to Queretaro end up choosing Juriquilla
as a place to live. So there's this misconception that it's like an expat
enclave, but it's really not. Only a tiny percentage of
the people who live here are expats. For example, In this gated community that I live in, there's 101 units and only one other unit is occupied by an American or a Canadian. So just me and them and
I'm about to move out, so pretty soon it's just going to be them and the rest of the people
who live here are Mexicans. But that's very much
true about other parts of Juriquilla as well. Yes, there's some Americans and Canadians spread out here and there, but really there are
only a tiny percentage of the population here in Juriquilla. As you can tell, I love living here. It is so amazing. I love the home. I love the community. I love how close it is
located to so many things like grocery stores and
malls and great restaurants and things like that. Also, my landlord is awesome. His handyman, that he has to fix anything that goes wrong is great as well, and everything that goes wrong
gets fixed really quickly. So that has been
incredible this whole time. So since I love this house
so much, why am I moving? And that's because there's
nothing more important to me in my life right now than
building a future with May, and we both agree that in order for us to build a future together
the way we want it, we need to move on from
this Juriquilla home and into another place that
doesn't have all the history attached to this home. Before I tell you how
much I'm paying for rent, I want to give you a little comparison. I was recently in Las Vegas and I was talking to a local there and this person has a
small studio apartment. It doesn't even have a single bedroom and this apartment is in a
not so great part of town. A part of town where you would
not want to walk around in any time of the day, especially at night. And for this small apartment,
he's paying $1,500 a month. And that doesn't even include
the expensive electricity and the expensive internet bills that come along with renting in the US. So after that, the total
rent cost is around $1,700. Whereas here, I have this huge home, I don't know the exact square footage but I imagine it's at
least 3000 square feet. It has four bedrooms. It has five bathrooms. It's in one of my favorite neighborhoods in the entire city where I
have no fear walking around anytime of day or night
or anything like that. It has amazing views from
every side of the house and the rent in US dollars fluctuates depending on what the exchange rate is. But over the course of the
year as I've been living here, it's average about $1,700. Oh, and included in the price
of the rent is the HOA fee or what here they call
the Mantenimiento fee and that's 5,000 pesos a month. So really my rent is 30,000
pesos plus a 5,000 peso HOA fee. In addition to the price of the rent I also have to pay for electric,
gas, water, and internet. My electric bill is about
$60 every two months or about $30 a month. My gas bill is about $20 a month. And my water bill is usually
a little over $30 a month between 30 and $35 a month. And then my internet bill, paying for the fastest speeds I can get, 500 megabits per second and it also includes the
biggest baddest Netflix package and that is $50 a month. So my rent plus all of my bills that come along with living
here total slightly more than $1,800 a month. Or I can go rent a small
studio apartment in Las Vegas in a bad part of town for $1,700 a month. I think I'll take this. If you liked this video, click on this one next it's
another home tour I did here in the city of Juriquilla. I think you're really
going to like that place. So go check it out and
I'll see you on Saturday.
