Buy-to-let Blair! Tony joins Cherie as landlord
TONY Blair is joining his wife Cherie as a buy-to-let landlord, it has emerged.
The former prime minister has embarked on plans to expand the pair’s multimillion-pound portfolio of properties.
They have set up a company, Harcourt Ventures Ltd, to help manage their growing rental empire, which was incorporated at Companies House last month.
The firm does not appear to have begun trading but will engage in ‘letting and operating’ properties, records show.
The Blairs already own 38 homes worth an estimated £33million.
Their portfolio includes a series of flats in north-west England which Mrs Blair, 62, and eldest son Euan, 33, are renting out via their existing company, Oldbury Residential Ltd.
Companies House documents show Oldbury held investments worth £2.4million in the year ending April 2016. Tony Blair’s decision to join the property scheme comes as a surprise after he previously announced his decision to wind down his commercial activities. He pledged to instead focus on charity work and politics, which has seen him launch an institute seen by critics as a vehicle to find ways of halting Brexit.
Harcourt Ventures Ltd was set up at Companies House on March 21 with Mr Blair owning 50 per cent of the shares. Mrs Blair is the company’s sole director, although Nicky Blair, 31, the couple’s second son, was a director for a single day on March 21, the records show.
Despite initial losses, the financially-savvy Blairs have banked at least £1.7million in profits from buying and selling nine properties, and the combined increase in value of the 38 homes they currently own amounts to about £12million.
Mrs Blair and Euan are already landlords of a considerable buy-to-let empire. In 2014, they bought ten Manchester flats – next to a rubbish dump – for £650,000, before paying £1.3million for a block of 14 Stockport flats. They later purchased three more in Stockport and four in Manchester.
The family already has an extensive portfolio of private homes for themselves and their children. One of Tony and Cherie’s London properties is a £9million five-storey Georgian townhouse, which they purchased in 2004.
Three years later they snapped up the £800,000 mews behind it, and have since paid off the mortgage. In 2008 they bought a £5.75million Grade Ilisted Buckinghamshire manor house, now worth £10million. A £1.35million four-storey Georgian property in the capital was bought for son Nicky in 2012 – and paid for in cash.
They later spent £600,000 on a three-bedroom cottage in Buckinghamshire for Mr Blair’s sister Sarah, as well as a £3.62million townhouse in the capital for Euan and his wife Suzanne in 2013.
Extensive portfolio