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“People used to know their neighbours,” he says. “Now you are more likely to get stabbed if you speak to them…”

Property overseas: ‘Tis the season to be leaving
Ross Clark
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/12/2007 Page 1 of 3

More Britons than ever departed these shores last year - taking £6bn
with them. Ross Clark finds out where they are buying

Blue sky thinking: The top six countries for British emigrants are
Australia, Spain (above), France, USA and New Zealand
More Britons than ever departed these shores last year - taking £6bn
with them. Ross Clark finds out where they are buying

Britain, we are often warned, is short of skilled teachers. But the
country has not done enough to hang on to Jane and Gary Rouse. Jane,
a former head teacher, Gary, a former deputy head, and their
daughters Emma, 16, and Rebecca, 14, are flying to New Zealand on New
Year’s Eve to begin new lives.

“I’m totally disillusioned with the education system,” says Gary, 44,
who was made redundant in a reorganisation of his school and, he
adds, was given little support in finding a new post. “Now we’ve
managed to secure management jobs in schools in Auckland,” he
explains. “Life is very much more laid-back out there, and the houses
are cheaper, so we will be able to live mortgage-free. ”

In fact, moving from Kent to Auckland will net them the equivalent of
a substantial pension plan. They are selling their five-bedroom house
in the village of Bekesbourne through Strutt & Parker for £645,000
and buying in New Zealand for £280,000.

advertisement” We’ve looked at the schools and they are very good,”
says Gary. “I have an uncle who lives out there and has been trying
to persuade me to go for years. Rather than sit there moping and
living off my redundancy cheque, we decided to go for it. Perhaps we
should have done it years ago.”

The Rouses are far from the only ones who have decided to leave the
country. We hear a lot about record immigration, but rather less
about the record levels of emigration. According to the latest
figures from the Office of National Statistics, 400,000 British
residents left the country last year with the intention of staying
away for at least a year, an increase of 10 per cent on the year
before and the highest number ever recorded. Of these, 207,000 were
British citizens; the rest were foreign nationals. While emigrants
are still outnumbered by immigrants, at present it is the former who
are growing at a faster rate: net immigration fell from 244,000 in
2004 to 191,000 in 2006. The dramatic rise in emigration has
implications for the housing market which are rarely discussed. While
few of the immigrants arriving in Britain from Eastern Europe will be
able to afford property in the near future, many people leaving the
country are selling substantial homes. This is taking large amounts
of money out of the property market. In an exclusive piece of
research for The Sunday Telegraph, Lucian Cook of Savills has
estimated that £5·67 billion worth of equity was taken out of the
British property market by the 207,000 Britons who emigrated in 2006.
To put the figure into perspective, this exceeds the £5·5billion
pumped into the property market by last year’s bumper city bonuses -
which were held responsible for the boom in London and South East
house prices in the first half of 2007.

Next year, estimates Savills, City bonuses will pump a more modest
£2billion into the property market - but at current trends even more
equity will be taken out by Britons emigrating: all of which makes
one wonder who is going to be buying the homes they leave behind.

Unquestionably, the high cost of housing is playing a part in the
decision of younger Britons to leave the country. Emigrants to New
Zealand, for example, will find average house prices, according to
the REINZ index, of 350,000 New Zealand dollars (£134,000). Those
going to Australia face more expensive property, with the median
house prices, according to the RP Data-Rismark index, standing at the
equivalent of £186,000.

Unlike the Rouses, Gavin Fullen, 36, an electrical engineer from
Manchester, will not be selling an expensive house when he leaves for
Australia this week. He has never owned one. He missed out on the
housing boom because he was in Australia between 1998 and 2000.
Having waited for prices to come down, he has decided to make a
permanent move abroad to improve his standard of living and to leave
behind a jaundiced view of Britain. “People used to know their
neighbours,” he says. “Now you are more likely to get stabbed if you
speak to them. The weather’s part of it, too, and the politics. None
of the political parties has got foresight. It’s the decent people
who are leaving the country.”

Gavin has decided to seek his nirvana in Perth, where, after spending
a couple of months travelling, he will look for work in the gold
mining industry. “In Britain, I’ve worked on short term contracts
building hospitals and processing plants,” he says. “But in Australia
I can get much longer term work. I will also be able to afford a
house, which I can’t do in Britain. Perth is the most isolated city
in the world, but the worst bits of it are like the best bits of
Manchester. The only things I will miss about Britain are cheese and
onion pies and the Lake District.”

Pp 2-3 cont’d,
http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/global/ main.jhtml?
view=DETAILS& grid=&xml= /global/2007/ 12/27/noindex/ pleaving125. xml