How quickly could a Premier League player invest in property?

The Premier League – the world’s most watched domestic football competition – returns on Friday when Champions League winners (and last year’s Premier League runners-up) Liverpool take on newly promoted Norwich at Anfield.

With football fever firmly on its way back, online agency Yopa has now revealed that Premier League players are able to purchase an average priced house in any of the Premier League towns or cities in the space of just a few weeks.

While property prices may be cooling, especially in London, Premier League salaries are soaring to higher levels than ever before – and these sky-high wages would give them the capital to invest in property with ease.

In Liverpool, for example, it would take a player just three weeks to buy a home outright according to the research.

Throughout England, Premier League players are taking home a pretty penny, earning a huge average salary of £30,695 per week. As such, even a home in uber-fashionable Chelsea would only require the average Premier League player to save up for 37 weeks to stump up the cash to purchase the deeds. This weekly wage is nearly as much as the average first-time buyer deposit, which is just over £33,000 according to Halifax.

Unbelievably, it would take as little as three and a half years, or just 194 weeks, for the Premier League’s elite sporting stars to be able to buy a property in all 20 English Premier League locations.

Players that wish to diversify their investments and capitalise on the benefits of property as a long-term investment should take note, Yopa says.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, the research found that for a quick win Scots should look to purchase in Glasgow, the home of fierce rivals Rangers and Celtic, where it would take 32 weeks or 5,376 hours to secure themselves a home.

Scottish Premier League players, however – who earn significantly less than their English counterparts – would need eleven times as long to get on the property ladder thanks to the lower earning potential north of the border.

The capital Edinburgh is home to the most ‘palatial pads’ in Scotland, with Scottish Premier League players requiring 62 weeks or 10,290 hours to settle down near the goalposts of Easter Road, the home of Hibernian FC, where average house prices are at a premium.  

Scoring a property in all 10 Scottish Premier League cities would take pros plying their trade north of the border nearly 8 years - more than double the length of their English neighbours, who would also own twice the number of properties.

“The whole country is on the verge of football fever with the return of the Premier Leagues both sides of the border,” Ben Poynter, chief executive at Yopa, said.

“Yopa’s research shows that players’ sky-high wages can get them on the property ladder in record time and in the space of less than three weeks, players could score themselves a property close to historic Anfield.”