Liz Truss is leading Tory party conference this week.
But when she’s not in Birmingham, where does she live, and how many homes does she own? Let’s take a look through her property porfolio.
The Downing Street flat
The former Foreign Secretary, a ‘true-blue’ MP who cites Margaret Thatcher as her inspiration and has represented her South West Norfolk constituency since 2010, plans to use the much-coveted flat above 11 Downing Street.
Boris and Carrie’s 2020 lavish renovation of the property came under fire after it emerged that Tory donor Lord Brownlow had helped to pay for it.
The Cabinet Office has a £30,000 annual budget for the upkeep of 11 Downing Street, but the final cost of the Johnsons’ project is believed to have hovered close to £112,000.
The Johnsons paid for the extra costs themselves, but it remains to be seen how many of the furnishings they have taken with them to their new home. Will the famous Lulu Lytle gold wallpaper be to Ms Truss’s tastes?
The Norfolk family home
Ms Truss has a more modest property portfolio than her leadership rival Rishi Sunak.
While the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and his billionaire heiress wife own a five-bedroom Kensington mews property and a Santa Monica holiday house, the new PM has a modest family home in Thetford, Norfolk.
Ms Truss, 47, reportedly bought the three-bedroom detached house in the market town, which is located 30 miles from Norwich and was the filming location for the popular TV series Dad’s Army, for just £180,000 twelve years ago.
According to Rightmove, detached properties in Thetford have sold for an average of £336,506 in the past 12 months.
In addition to her Norfolk property, Ms Truss also has a home in Greenwich, south-east London. Ms Truss has lived in the area with her husband and two daughters for more than 15 years. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is thought to live on the same street of period homes west of Greenwich Park.
Hello to Chequers
Ms Truss will now be able to entertain guests at the Prime Minister’s country residence of Chequers, the 16th-century Buckinghamshire manor where Mr Johnson spent the final few weeks of his premiership.
The grace-and-favour home in the Chiltern Hills has been the official second home of those in the top job since 1921. It boasts 1,500-acre lawns, an indoor heated swimming pool in an orangery and a huge collection of Oliver Cromwell memorabilia.
Farewell to her Foreign Secretary homes
During her time as Foreign Secretary, Ms Truss enjoyed access to Grade I-listed Chevening House, a 3,000 acre country mansion in Kent which has a lake, maze, and a double hexagonal walled kitchen garden.
Found between Sevenoaks and Biggin Hill, Chevening House dates back 800 years and is used for business meetings, though she did have to share the 115-bedroom property with deputy PM Dominic Raab.
The unusual agreement was a compromise by her former boss, Mr Johnson, who agreed to allow the two high-profile cabinet members to share the building for personal and business purposes.
As Foreign Secretary, Ms Truss was also entitled to take up No 1 Carlton Gardens, two floors of a John Nash-designed building in Westminster which since 1945 has been used as a grace-and-favour flat for those holding the ministerial role.
However Ms Truss was reportedly happy to let former housing secretary Michael Gove move in there instead, despite him being a lower ranked minister. The flat will soon be empty again after Mr Gove was sacked from his cabinet role by Mr Johnson.
The controversial NY party pad
While her personal property portfolio is relatively low-key, back in May, Ms Truss found herself at the centre of a row over the Foreign Office’s plans to buy a £20 million “party house” for British diplomats in New York.
A leaked memo seen by The Mail on Sunday stated that Ms Truss was “very supportive” of plans to buy the freehold on a 19th Century townhouse from Guy Wildenstein, an art dealer who is facing a retrial accused of £500 million tax fraud, which he denies.
According to reports the 9,600 sq ft Manhattan townhouse, which has views over the East River, would be used mainly by Dame Barbara Janet Woodward, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
However a Foreign Office spokesperson told the Mail at the time: “The Foreign Secretary has not been consulted and has made no decisions on this issue. She has therefore not expressed any views.”
