Finally made the decision to return home (june 2010). After 5 years we feel we cant go on changing our views every 3 months , we need to feel settled. For us Perth is okay but cant provide the life we want. Have to say im sick to death of people saying to me "what do you want to move back to that ####hole for" ,suppose some people have to justify there own decissions !.If you have a nice house live in a good area ,good jobs ,family close by , regular holidays ,not in huge debt and generally have a good life i personally feel you will not better yourself by moving half way around the world . It has been a great holiday but i feel that i do not want to spend the rest of my life here.

I will miss
AFL ,Go The Dockers
Autumn
Certain friends
Pretty Perth

I wont miss
Flies
Summer
Driving
Overpriced property
Isolation
Feeling of being ripped off
This is the best country to live in bull###

It has been fun and certainly had its highs as well as its lows , thankyou to everyone who contributes to this forum .At times this kept me sane knowing there were like minded people out there like ourselves.
All the best to others that are making the move back

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Ditto for us in the USA.
It has been a good place to spend part of our lives in, no regrets in coming here, there will be no regrets in going back home a couple months from now.

Good luck to you.

Hope you have a great new life back at home, enjoy the next couple of months.
all the best to you, there are plenty of people who feel the same way as you, it's just that they can't afford to come home so will always say how great Australia is and how crap the UK is.

I liked the UK when I left it, I never liked OZ I just didn't get it and I didn't want to live in the 70's (been there once) I love the UK now, and yes it has it's problems but they don't become part of my life.

Australia is a good country for some people, just not the ones that choose to leave.

Have a great life back in the UK

JJ. I don't mean to be too personal but are you selling your house or have sold it? I only ask because I too want to move back to UK one is not sure if on a permanent basis but want to do the one year thing. One major setback is selling my darned house in Arizona. Been on market for ages but such huge surplus hardly any buyers at all.. i just wondered. I have great credit and don't want to walk away from the house..Thanks and my best to you on your journey back to our homeland..

If you are concerned about your credit score, I'd drop the price and sell rather than walk away. The buyers seem to be playing "how low can you go" around here. Theres a glut of bank owned homes just sitting empty, and rotting away.

i've dropped it as much as i can. if it goes any lower I will walk away owing money. i will jus about break even. arizona is saturated w/homes like many states are.

fulwood, Understand your situation and sympathize with the difficulty to make house sales, was a concern of mine too how long it would take to sell, was resigned to a potential long wait, was in shock that I had a contract in 48 hrs from signing up with estate agent. Now am going through the inspection steps with closing sched for end May.
If I knew the secret to our sale I would bottle and sell it. We did trawl websites for best advice on prepping home. We did examine competition and evaluate what we could do to make ours more desirable.

We made it a distinctive house in the street with major effort to make online and driveby kurb appeal, (powerwashed, painted, cleaned windows and outdoor lights, flowers, bootblacked the plastic mail box(hubby's idea), being critical ourselves of how it looked, not necessarily how we would want it all the time but how to have the best appeal. Inside, after 4 months of labour in every spare hour it was painted throughout, updated light fittings, new carpet, clutter gone, surfaces sparkling, nearly emptied clothes closets (packed rest in suitcases in attic, even got paranoid and used matching clothes hangers all in a row) - with the intent to make it ready-to-move-in (there are plenty of fixer-uppers out there, but lets be different and make it instantly move in-able , imagine someone transferred into area, keen to start new job, wants a house ready to go.).
Made it look as if barely anyone was living in it, although we had full furnishings still

On dashing out prior to agent / viewers coming in, turned on every light, open all window shades, left doors appealingly partially open, we put kitty and cat evidence and other last minute clutter in car and exited for an hour
We priced it $5,000 more than similar in street that sold a few months ago but $5,000 less than similar already on market in the street. So a fair price.

Here's the comments from the buyers and their agent compared to what else they had seen:
It looks well maintained and cared for.
The forced air filters were clean.
There were protective runners so that viewers wouldn't dirty the carpets.
There was a folder on the kitchen counter containing Termite Inspection contract and report, also other guarantees and relevant info (and they did read it because they mentioned stuff in it)
Agent said There was only neutral smells (no curries or fish for 1 month before, cat litter banished to garage 1 month before, windows had been open whenever we could)
No floor squeaks, (yes, they commented)
Another viewer, not the buyer, commented it was too warm in the house so we were planning to run A/C in future views (even though to us the temp was just right without it).

Did all this work, was the 4 months of effort worth it ? well they bought ours and not the similar one nearby that is $5,000 more and has a tidy but un-remarkable kurb appeal (I hadn't been inside but they advertised the same features).
However hubby is having nightmares about finding wood rot or something else that he needs to fix.

Plus we got lucky, buyer was indeed the type we had hoped for, in town for the weekend on house buying trip, in process of a work relocation to the area, looking for something ready to move into.

We discovered also that agents are useful, we had made big effort to impress our agent with our seriousness and every last detail of the house and vicinity - this she used to impress buyers agent and he was influential to buyers. We had not paid the big bucks for a top agency, had chosed a flat rate local outfit that advertised in the same places as the big boys, and chose an agent that was pleasant to work with and when she toured our house was able to suggest updates (to light fittings) but didn't auto speel the usual, "get new curtains, paint the garage floor" - we did neither).

So we are really pleased - although it was 24 hours after contract before hubby came out of state of shock!!

Best of luck to you, I've heard of long time market sitters taking house off market for 30-60 days, making big efforts to change the appeal before going back on fresh with regular price again. My perception is that if on market a long time then potential buyers wonder why it hasn't sold already.

"arizona is saturated w/homes like many states are"
Here in NC too, hence our effort to make it emotionally attractive for a fair price.
(But I don't know what we would have done if we too had been waiting a long time, would have had to drop price I guess - or invest in upgrades)

Hi , I'm here in the US, do you mean if we have nice homes , car etc etc, we should not leave to return to the UK?? I'm so up and down, I am hoping you mean get my ar---e back home where I belong. tiamobrit1

Hey JJ I do hope inspection goes well and house sells great to hear that. well there is not much more i can do to my house JJ tried to sell about 2-3 years ago just before everything started going down hill. I spent about 10K on upgrades to house but that pretty much included flooring, counter tops, wood blinds etc. It is what it is though. If I can't sell it I will just rent it out much to my chagrin but will not let house stop me from moving.. I wish you all the best on your return to UK.

Indeed, sounds like you done all the right things with upgrades, but if the buyers are not there then is not much any of us can do to make them come. I think we were incredibly lucky, right place at right time, so many others, even in our street have no joy with selling. We are really pleased with our luck but do feel somewhat guilty even saying it on here because we read of so many that are stuck.
You are planning an experimental year in UK, maybe coming back. Could you rent it out to a Corporation that has temporary workers come to US, just an idea I read somewhere. Are u a USC - if not then does that impact your ability to come back to US / sale of house if you are abroad?
A house is important to our futures because we all have so much of our money tied up in them but as you say, we must not let it rule our lives. Tough decisions.

We are in Perth..just for another two weeks (staying with friends) until we return home to live...AFL...have you had the brain surgery then...lol....!! I can honestly say I am beyound the "are you mad...." etc especially since we have been staying with our friends.....we have never "played in our own backyard" so to speak so most of our friends live all around Perth and from all corners of the globe...on the other hand my friend knows a heck of a lot of "brits" here in our area....and also our friend has been here in Perth since they were 15 years old and now in their early 40's..... meeting people she knows here has been an eye opener....a few nice stories but for the main part there seems to be a lot of unhappy people living here for one reason or another....a few have said good luck but the most look in horror....yet I would not swop my life for theirs for all the tea in china....it seems to me a lot of people I have met here are all "smiley" on the front but not so very great on the inside....good luck with your move...if you do not feel like Aus is home to you after 5 years here....more than likely it never will....so go before you get sucked into life here.....

Hi we sold last year in the down market after nearly a year on the market...we could of kept it for another year then put it on the market this year as the market is slightly better here at the moment but we decided to sell so that we could get on with our plans and stop living in limbo..hence a year later and moving out of the rental we have had for the past year (since we sold our home)we are now 2 weeks from returning home....sometimes life does not go on the smooth path we want so we have to make other arrangements and decisions, sometimes not easy ones either but if you really want something then you just have to go for it.....sounds like you have come up with plan B and sounds good...."you make the best decisions you can with what you have at the time".....good luck

We lived in NZ for 5 yrs but have to say i could never get my head round the fact that i would never return or settle in my homeland.We returned to Lincolnshire in Oct 2008. It was quite hard settling back into a routine (reverse culture shock) and all that, as our daughter ironically had moved over to Perth from NZ in 2007 which made the return to UK harder.
Some folk settle back a lot easier i guess.
Anyway weve been back now 18 months and love the feeling of being grounded,driving through pretty little villages in the wolds being mesmerised by old saxon churches and thatched cottages,old pubs,well you get the picture as Perth has none of this.
Weve been there several times to see our daughter and we know where you're coming from.
The dilemma for us, is although we desperately want to be with our daughter, Perth just doesnt cut it for us as a place to live, and we know financially we would be set right back as the houses and cost of living are so much more expensive than here (weve done the sums).
I think once you get your feet back under the table here in UK you will love being back and you can reflect on the life experience that was Perth.
all the best.

JJ, yes it is what it is - life will go on whether sell house or not. Yep I'm US citizen assumed my father's nationality so life for me has always been pretty easy meaning no green card crap to deal with. had social secuirty card think within few months of landing.. anyway.. good luck.. Brits1 - yes will do what I have to leave Arizona. We are already inching our way up to the 90s and it's only bl..dy April!