It rarely starts with a flight booking—more often with a quiet mental click, the moment you realize you’re keeping the door to elsewhere slightly ajar. A fresh survey indicates that roughly one in five people in Germany is thinking about moving abroad, and the share is markedly higher among younger adults. Political dissatisfaction, the search for personal freedom, better economic prospects and a broader idea of “quality of life” are among the most cited reasons. Yet for many, the thought remains a thought—held back by family ties, language, jobs and the sheer weight of starting over.
On a damp evening, the kind that turns streetlights into blurred halos, a phone screen throws a rectangle of sun onto the kitchen table. A short clip: a coastal promenade, someone laughing, a cup of coffee set down next to a passport. “Imagine that being normal,” someone says—half teasing, half testing the sentence for truth. The room goes quiet for a second. Not awkward quiet. Considering quiet.
Emigration used to sound like a dramatic rupture: suitcases, farewells, letters forwarded across oceans. Now it often begins with something smaller and more modern: a browser tab. Then another. “Jobs in Amsterdam.” “Taxes in Switzerland.” “Schools in Portugal.” “Cost of living in Denmark.” The fantasy is no longer just anecdotal. It has a number attached to it.
According to a recent survey reported in German media, around one in five people in Germany is considering moving abroad. It’s a striking figure—not because everyone will leave, but because so many are rehearsing the idea. The age split matters: younger adults are significantly more likely to picture a life elsewhere than older generations, for whom leaving can feel like severing roots. For many under 30, it sounds closer to a plan: testable, reversible, manageable. If it doesn’t work, you come back.
You can hear the difference in the language. It’s less “I can’t take it anymore” and more “I’m exploring options.” The emotion is still there—only now it carries a spreadsheet.
The reasons people name form a familiar constellation. A common driver is dissatisfaction with politics—not necessarily one policy, but an accumulation: the feeling of drift, of endless conflict, of decisions that don’t translate into daily relief. Alongside that sits a very practical question: What do I get back for what I put in? Wages, taxes, social contributions, housing costs—most people don’t experience these as separate lines. They experience them as pressure.
“I just want to breathe again,” says a young professional, lowering her voice as if the sentence is too intimate for the room. By breathing she doesn’t mean mountains or sea air—she means margin: in the monthly budget, in the future, in her nervous system.
Another major motive is the broad, elastic phrase quality of life. It can mean sunshine, yes. But just as often it means shorter commutes, less bureaucracy, more predictable public services, a sense of safety, or a social atmosphere that feels calmer. Some look north, imagining Scandinavian reliability. Some look south, picturing longer evenings and lighter winters. Others look to Switzerland, where higher incomes and proximity to home make the idea feel less like exile and more like an upgrade.
It’s hard to miss why younger people feature so prominently in this trend. Many begin adult life with temporary contracts, fast-rising rents, and a housing market that can feel like an audition. You assemble documents for landlords the way you would for a job interview: payslips, credit reports, references—then wait, and often hear nothing back.
“Sometimes it feels like I’m applying for my own life,” a student says, scrolling through city names as if they’re destinations and personalities at once: Copenhagen, Vienna, Zurich, Barcelona. His friend leans over. The conversation moves at the speed of a thumb.
And it isn’t purely escape. It’s curiosity, too. Europe has shrunk in practical terms; remote work has softened borders; English is a tool many already use daily. Leaving no longer means disappearing. Friends remain in your pocket, video calls replace Sunday coffee. That doesn’t erase the cost of starting over—but it lowers the threshold for imagining it.
Thinking is not the same as moving. The survey’s mood is accompanied by a quieter reality: many who consider emigrating don’t act—at least not now. The anchors are obvious and powerful. Family. Children in school. Aging parents. A friend group that functions like infrastructure. And language—an invisible kind of home where humor, small talk, and effortless competence live.
“I can work in English,” an IT specialist says, “but I don’t want to translate my entire life.” That sentence punctures a little of the romance. Because emigration isn’t only ocean views and new cafés. It’s also paperwork, unfamiliar rules, costly mistakes, and the subtle exhaustion of being the person who doesn’t automatically know how things work.
For some, the idea of leaving becomes a mental pressure valve: a way to regain a sense of control when everything feels tighter—one more rent increase, one more confusing form, one more debate that ends in nothing. You don’t have to go to benefit from the thought that you could.
When people get specific, certain destinations recur—each one acting like a shorthand for a wish:
Every one of these images has a shadow—tight housing markets, high costs, complicated registration processes. But as mental pictures, they are potent. And potent pictures travel fast.
A society doesn’t have to be collapsing for people to imagine leaving it. Sometimes it’s enough that the future feels heavy. This “one in five” statistic reads like a postcard from the in-between: between belonging and option, between stability and longing. It suggests that many people now treat the future as an individual strategy—something you design, rather than something you inherit.
In conversations, a sentence often appears in a softer tone: “I don’t want to leave because I hate Germany. I want to leave because I want my life to feel lighter again.” Not a dramatic declaration—more like a slow crack in the everyday.
For real estate investors, a surge in emigration intent isn’t a direct market driver like interest rates or construction volumes—but it can be a meaningful leading indicator of household sentiment and mobility. If younger, skilled, higher-earning groups become more willing to relocate across borders, the effects show up unevenly across locations and asset types.
Investor takeaway: The key question is no longer only “Where are jobs?” but “Where do people feel their lives work?” Markets that answer that question convincingly—through affordability, functioning services, and predictable regulation—tend to produce more durable rental demand and lower tenant churn, which ultimately underpins long-term cash flows.
