Gove takes £400k hit on house sale
Quick deal so Tory and ex ‘can move on’
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Michael Gove and his ex-wife are selling the family home for £ 400,000 less than its estimated market value.
The Tory housing minister and newspaper columnist Sarah Vine listed the f ive- bed pile in west London for £2,095,000.
It is now sold subject to contract,. They bought it for £ 2million in April 2017 and, if they get the asking price, will make less than a five per cent profit.
Some housing websites suggest it is now worth as much as £2.5million.
EstatEstate agents describe the property – with a lilibrary, railed balcony and walled garden – as “oozing style”.
A sourcesou last night said: “It’s surprising they havhaven’t held out for a better offer, but I think they both just wanted it over and done with.
“IIt’s understandable they didn’t wawant the sale to drag on, particularly fofor the sake of their children. It aallows them both to move on.”
The sale comes four months after a judge granted a divorce in “le s s tha n 10 s e conds ” bbased on the Cabinet minister’s “unreasonable behaviour” and that “the marriage had irretrievably bbroken down”.
ThThey split last July after almost 20 yeayears of marriage and had previously shareshared the property with their two childrechildren.
Gove,Gove whose official title is Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and CommuCommunities, has been living in the sumptusumptuous “grace-and-favour” Carlton Gardens residence in Westminster, usually reserved for the Foreign Secretary.
He is said to have moved into the £25million property at the end of 2021 at Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s insistence.
The PM, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Whip are all political positions which come complete with a grace-andfavour residence.
But Gove, 54, is believed to be the first with the relatively junior post of Housing Minister to be given the privilege.
Carlton Gardens has a ballroom, two dining rooms and a three- bedroom apartment – all a far cry from the Tory politician’s childhood home in Aberdeen.
Gove spent the first four months of his life in care after being given up shortly after birth by his biological mother.
He was adopted by Ernest and Christine Gove, who brought him up in a three-bed semi.
Vine, 55, was born in Swansea but brought up in Italy where her dad worked as an accountant.
She moved back to England aged 16 and started out as a journalist at the Daily Mirror. She is godmother to one of former PM David Cameron’s daughters.
In an interview about her marriage split she denied Gove had strayed, saying: “Despite the rumours, his only mistress was politics. That’s what he is in love with.”