Bushes to Swap White House for Dallas Pad

As their eight years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come to a close, George and Laura Bush have revealed their plans to move on, with the announcement that they have bought a house back home in Texas.

The post-presidential house, a single-story red-brick building, is in the Preston Hollow section of Dallas, the same neighborhood where the family lived before Bush entered politics. It is one of the wealthiest sections of the city.

The home might not have been the Bush's first choice. The couple spent months house-hunting, and even consulted a prominent Dallas architect, Frank Welch, about the prospect of building a home, one of their new neighbors said yesterday. During a visit to a Dallas art museum in September, Laura Bush said the couple had not found a place to live.

But now the Bushes appear to have settled on a four-bedroom house in a quiet cul-de-sac. The sale, in the name of a Texas accountant who is an friend of the Bush family, went through on October 1.

By the standards of the neighborhood - and certainly the White House - the Bushes will be heading to a relatively modest retirement home. There are servants' quarters and a detached garage and storage building, but there is no pool and no helicopter pad.

However, the couple can take comfort from the knowledge that they will be surrounded by fellow Republicans. Their new home abuts on the property of an enormous estate owned by a fellow Republican and former business partner of the president, and that is fitted with a private helicopter pad.

Property records put their new home's assessed value at just over $2m (£1.4m), but it is probably worth much more, the Dallas Morning News reported. The paper said that an adjacent house was also changing hands, probably to house Bush's security detail.

The neighborhood is conveniently close to Southern Methodist University where Bush plans to build his Freedom Institute, a thinktank and presidential library dedicated to promoting the policies of his administration.

The presidential library has already been the source of controversy, with newspapers raising questions about Bush's efforts to raise funds for the personal monument to his own presidency. Bush has held about a dozen dinners at the White House for potential donors, the Washington Post said in a leader comment.

The new home is just a few hours' drive from the ranch in Crawford, Texas, that had been the president's original choice for a retirement home. Laura Bush reportedly insisted on Dallas.

She told reporters this week that she was looking forward to a more normal life in Dallas.