The flood of Brits returning from France is a myth

Last Saturday's Daily Telegraph devoted much of the property section to 'The Au Revoir Gang' - this much scribbled-about horde of Brits returning to the UK, their dreams of the good life in France shattered. The piece dealt almost entirely with top end properties ('Les Parrets is on the market with Savills for £7.17 million') and offered not a single statistic from start to finish.

This is not atypical of articles about 'Le Grand Retour'. At times it seems like editors know their readers find the schadenfreude of other people's disappearing dreams very comforting. But only anecdotal evidence supports the trend's existence; hard numbers suggest it simply isn't happening.

Saying 'Brits in France' is like saying 'British Muslims'. There are 200,000 expats living full-time in France. Another 300,000 do so on an 'unofficial' basis. In turn about 180,000 own property there, but retain a genuine main residence in the UK.

It’s unlikely that a brief fall in currency and interest rates would cause an exodus

That's three very different tribes, and within these are numerous sub-groups: anti-Callaghan (arrived 1974-8), anti-Thatcher (arrived 1980-88), anti-Blair/pc (arrived after 2000), Francophile enthusiasts, workers looking for a better life and career, scroungers looking for an easy life preying on expats, folks with French spouses, and retirees made marginally well-off by Britain's various house-price bonanzas.

Thus, it seems highly unlikely that a brief fall in currency and interest rates would cause a mass exodus. In my experience, only the last group mentioned above have left in the wake of this double-whammy. But enough Samples of One: what do the statistics suggest?

Disillusioned returnees From France are nothing new. In 2005, an EU census showed that for every five UK citizens who give France a try, one comes back within two years. This 'churn' number matches the number given to website entrée.com by international removals companies recently for 2008. Over half of those interviewed did say that in 2009 thus far, the ratio had changed to 60:40. Others in different sectors said it hadn't.

Is this a flood of returning rovers? Well, not really. First of all, we are still looking at a net outflow per annum of quite big numbers. Britain's Office of National Statistics declares that 42,000 UK residents moved to France 'on a long-term basis' in the two years 2006/7.

Although these are the latest data, we know also from the French estate agents' association (the FNAIM) that the total French property market fell just 1.3 per cent in 2008 - although the fall was higher in the UK buyer sector.

But already in 2009, the FNAIM notes, 'of 260 estate agents, 61 per cent said they had noticed an increase in prospective (UK) buyers in the first quarter of 2009 when compared with the latter quarter of 2008'.

In short, medium-term British interest in French property has grown, but the rate of increase has recently declined. Even at a 60:40 churn rate (and nowhere near all removals companies recorded this) that's a net annual outflow to France of over 22,000. Many up–to-the minute signs are that the decline is a blip: the pound is rising and interest rate-led investors can look forward to higher returns soon.

The current situation is precisely what one would expect. Who buys what and why among Britons with French property depends on motivation: investment, retirement, life-balance, local culture and so forth.

The well-prepared are here for the long haul, and the dreamers often leave quite quickly. The torrent of returnees is nothing more than an extra dribble of the trickle.