Any self-respecting millionaire footballer must have a property adviser. How else would he handle buying his pied- à-terre and country retreats here, holiday villas abroad and investment properties? How else would he tackle the hard sell of estate agents? “You cannot imagine how it feels to walk into an estate agency as a footballer,” says Lee Dixon, the former Arsenal and England star. “You’re immediately set upon by some 18-year-old who’ll give you his expert opinion on ‘market conditions’. You’ll be offered houses miles from where you want to live, in the wrong style, wrong size and wrong price bracket. They’ll pull the most appalling stunts.
“After I bought my last house, the agents’ new brochure had a picture of me together with a big picture of my house — meaning I was effectively promoting their business, all without my agreement. This sort of treatment is common.”
Dixon, 42, now a television pundit, says this is why he has bought into Oakhall Property Source, one of the many property search firms targeting footballers as clients.
It’s easy to understand why they do. According to Deloitte, Premiership football players collect salaries totalling £811m a year. An average top-flight player earns £17,000 a week. The elite few, such as Chelsea’s new signing, Michael Ballack, earn more than £100,000 a week. Dixon, who has a sizeable property portfolio, doesn’t actually find places for others, but introduces Oakhall to his sporting contacts.
A morning spent property window-shopping with Dixon reveals that today’s top players have moved far away from the mock-Tudor detached in St Albans they might have aspired to 20 years ago. Instead, they head for Notting Hill in London, though it could just as easily be Hampstead or Chelsea.
Just off Westbourne Grove, we visit a house that ticks all the boxes. It’s a four-storey terraced house, the lower ground floor of which is a massive kitchen-dining area, in gleaming industrial steel, red and white. The ground floor’s two reception rooms have been knocked through to make a big party room, perfect for celebrating a Cup-tie win.
There are two floors of bedrooms: the top floor is one huge master suite. It’s all sleek lines and understated elegance, a world away from Footballers’ Wives. This, says Dixon, is the sort of place people like him want; they just need someone else to take the hassle out of finding it.
“He’ll want every form of computerised wizardry on the market, including CCTV and sound systems that can be adjusted from different continents,” adds Oakhall’s managing director, Jeremy Lambourne. “He’ll want plasma screens in most rooms and I’m getting an increasing number of requests for satellite television from Italy and Argentina, to view the football abroad. Good links to Northolt and Farnborough — where their private jets can take off and land — is another new factor.”
Jonathan Power, a Cardiff- based property specialist, advises 150 famous sporting names, among them John Terry, Joe Cole and Ian Wright.
“Typically, I’ll meet a footballer after he has fallen for a property and has offered, on the spot, to pay the full asking price,” Power says. “That’s where I step in by going back to the agents and saying that it’s time to start negotiating in a realistic manner. Nobody takes advantage of my clients.”
Cosseting comes at a price. Oakhall charges 2% of the purchase price to search for a player’s “dream home”, ferry him to viewings, lead negotiations and arrange for redecoration. If selling, it charges 1% on top of the estate agent’s fee to clean and present the home and arrange the move.
If these percentages sound small, remember that the number of Premiership players owning houses worth less than £1.5m roughly equals the number driving around in second-hand Ford Mondeos.
Players also want to invest.
“I buy property on behalf of my clients worldwide, mostly in London, Tunisia, the West Indies and Bulgaria,” says Lambourne. “I expect them to make between 20%-25% per deal on their investments.”
Power buys new-build flats in Chelsea, for example, in bulk and for a discount, he says, of up to 20% for his clients.
So where do players want to spend their hefty pay packets? In London, as we’ve seen, and in Cheshire, where Manchester United’s players cluster. But the real property mecca is Cobham in Surrey. It has been a favourite stamping ground for decades — it’s commutable from the big London clubs and close to the airports — but it was Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho’s diktat that his players live within 15 minutes of their Surrey training ground that really fuelled the market.
Chelsea’s annual salary bill is £115m — £38m more than its nearest big-spending rival,
Manchester United. Three more Chelsea players are moving into the area, while Bolton’s Ian Walker and former stars Graeme Le Saux and Jamie Redknapp already own plots there. Builders such as Octagon, Beaufield Homes and Allos Developments are also tapping into the market.
“The wife or girlfriend is often more concerned with the big picture, and they like the classical look, with clean lines, lots of space and high ceilings,” says Ian Campling, of Allos Developments. “The man is often more interested in specific items: a cinema room, a gym, a large garage.”
Today’s mollycoddling contrasts sharply with Dixon’s early experiences. In 1988, having sold a house in Stoke for £36,000, he moved to a £175,000 three-bed home in Redbourne, Hertfordshire, but found the mortgage a struggle.
“In those days Arsenal would put you up in a grotty hotel for six weeks, then you were on your own,” he sighs. “I funded a pension but I had to fend for myself when it came to other investment advice and buying property. It’s a different world.”
