The Blair family’s climb up the property ladder has not been steady. While £615,000 seemed a fair price for their Islington home when they sold it in 1997, they could have profited substantially more from the area’s subsequent rise in fortunes had they held on to the property. The Richmond Crescent house in Barnsbury could now fetch about £2m, according to Anne Currell, the managing director of Currell Residential, a local estate agent.

Mindful of missing out on the housing boom, the prime minister and his wife tried their hand at property speculation in 2002 by haggling down the price of two small Bristol apartments, at the Panoramic development, from £295,000 to a reported £269,999, with the help of Peter Foster, a convicted conman. But Bristol was already close to the peak of its property boom then, and prices for luxury flats in the city have risen only modestly since.