Pommy sun-seekers look to put down roots in Australia

The Poms might be coming! Monthly visits to the overseas section of the top UK property portal rightmove.co.uk have passed the 2 million searches mark for the first time.

Rightmove Overseas says that 52% of its international destinations had an increase in searches during July. Victorian and South Australian properties on the website both recorded jumps in viewing. The NSW and Queensland listings fell in viewing popularity, although the viewing numbers are higher than Victoria and South Australia.

The greatest increase in searches occurred for British Columbia in Canada, with a rise of 64% month-on-month. The big winner was France, with three different regions receiving 40% more searches than in June.

Some of the biggest falls occurred for four Portuguese regions, with Costa Verde losing 23 places and dropping to 136th place on the website’s charts.

“The British appetite for property abroad shows no sign of slowing down as over 2 million searches were performed on Rightmove for overseas property in July, a record number for the site,” rightmove.co.uk says.

“Even in this economic climate, and maybe because of it, Brits are still chasing the overseas dream,” Shameem Golamy, head of overseas at Rightmove, suggests.

On average, Rightmove Overseas receives 80,000 unique visitors a week and generates more than $1.7 million overseas property searches a month for advertisers.

August is a historically strong month for search activity on Rightmove Overseas as British buyers return from their summer holidays abroad with dreams of capturing the experience by owning property where they were staying.

Top 10 Climbers and Fallers this month (areas with > 100 searches a day)