First, let me say, I did look under the Game play guide before I posted this request. It just tells you about traveling, not how to BUY a home. My Sims have an option to buy on this lot/build on this lot. However once I am finished I cannot get access to the house I built or bought

Once you have reached the right Visa Level (I forget what level that is right now, its 2 or 3 anyway) click on your phone in your backpack and you should see the option to buy holiday home. I think the options you saw come from using AM not the basic game - so I don't know what to suggest about what to do about getting access to that.

When you get to visa level 3 you can click on the phone in your inventory and select "real estate" then buy a home. You can also buy several homes. With the first one you will be moved automatically to the new home. With any others you buy nothing happens. If you want to move to the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) home you click you phone, real estate, and then select the option to move. You still own the 1st house, though. You're just moving to a different home. After this, when you come back for a new adventure it will ask you which house is your base. Pretty cool, really. I wish I could do this in regular worlds. It would be cool to have three or four homes to move around to.

I haven't tried it, but I wonder if I can split a family and have a couple sims live in one house and the rest in a different house?

Also, I think the sim that actually bought the house has to choose to move. Otherwise the family is placed in the default tourist hostel / campground. Anyway, I sent a couple sims in the same family to France, but because the "property owner" wasn't with them, and neither were level 3 they couldn't stay in the house. Not sure which factor messed them up, but it was annoying. I use Nraas to get them into the house anyway, though (kind of like breaking and entering, I guess, lol, even though they did technically have permission to stay there...)

Technically you can split the household, send your family to another house and honeymoon with your newly wed wife..haha!

Why don't you give it a try?

But I did encounter some problem after I had more than 1 vacation house in China, which I lost all my stuff in my Family Inventory and luckily I did saved before I went for vacation. Better safe than than sorry. Any other tips for owning a vacation home?

Thank you all for your help.. WHere and how do I find out what Level I am at..one Sim has like 15 Visas and can stay for 6 days at a time

Press K for the adventure journal, and then click on About France/About Egypt/ About China to see your visa level. If they can only go for 6 days, they haven't got to level 3 yet. I think you're getting confused with visa points, given for the adventures. You need 50 visa points to get to level 1, and I can't remember how many you need for the later ones, but more than 50 per level after that.