Cherie Blair has a reputation for knowing a bargain when she sees one.
And now the former Prime Minister’s wife has cast that eagle eye over the region’s booming property market – snapping up dozens of flats at knock-down rates in some of Greater Manchester’s prime property hotspots.
Since October 2014 she and the Blairs’ eldest son Euan have spent around £2.5m on homes in Stockport town centre , Whalley Range and Urmston , all of them apparently to rent out.
At current rates they will net around £170,000 a year from letting their 28 one-bed apartments, the latest of which were bought last month, to young professionals.
In total they now own clusters of flats at five different sites.
After setting up their property firm Oldbury Residential in 2014, they began by snapping up 14 flats on Higher Hillgate in Stockport town centre from a development that had gone into receivership.
The £1.3m price tag means the apartments, around the corner from the magistrates court, were bought for around £92,000 each.
At around the same time the Blairs also bought 10 flats in two rebuilt Victorian terraces on Gloucester Road in the centre of Urmston, the same road on which the area’s Labour MP is based.
The flats cost them £650,000, a figure local estate agents VitalSpace, which had marketed them, described as a ‘knock-down price’.
That development had been repossessed a year earlier – and features nine one-beds and a ‘simply spectacular and utterly unique 950ft penthouse apartment’.
Last September they switched their sights back to Stockport, picking up three new-build flats in Renaissance House, on Millbrook Street just off the A6, for around £75,000 each.
And finally just last month they moved into Manchester itself for the first time.
Focusing on Whalley Range – often a destination for young professionals wanting somewhere relatively cheap but still on Chorlton’s doorstep – they bought four flats in period conversions on Whalley Road, all for around £90,000.
All their apartments rent out at around £500 a month or slightly more – meaning in total the Blairs will enjoy a tidy rental income of around £170,000 a year.
However property prices in south Manchester’s suburbs are continuing to head northwards, meaning their investments are set to become increasingly lucrative.
According to Rightmove, sale prices have risen 13pc in Whalley Range in the last year, while as the city looks to retain more and more of its graduates, the suburb is likely to only become more in demand.