The average home buyer has to jump through several financial hoops to secure affordable housing. Professional athletes don’t have that problem. The highest-paid NBA player, Stephen Curry, will earn $59 million this season, which is enough to buy 41 houses in San Francisco.
Think that’s excessive? Some players can afford to purchase over 100 homes in their respective cities. But while it might seem like all professional athletes have scored a slam dunk when it comes to housing, not all players earn as much as Curry. In fact, some of the lowest-paid players can hardly afford to buy one median-priced home in their city.
Zoocasa analyzed the 2025–2026 salaries of the highest- and lowest-paid NBA players on each team and calculated how many median-priced homes each could afford in their respective cities if they spent their entire salary.
Stephen Curry may take the crown for having the highest salary in the NBA this season, but he lives in one of the most expensive cities in the country, where median home prices exceed $1.4 million. This decreases his buying power and puts him at the bottom of our ranking with just 41 houses.
It’s a different story for the NBA’s second-highest-paid player, Joel Embiid, though. The Sixers’ center can purchase 136 median-priced homes in Philadelphia thanks to his $55 million salary and the area’s low cost of living.
Also earning $55 million this season is Nikola Jokić, who can afford to buy 82 median-priced homes in Denver. Kevin Durant, earning slightly less at $54 million, outshines the entire top four highest-paid players by being able to purchase 156 homes in Houston. With a median home price of just $349,400, Houston is one of the most affordable NBA cities.
Still, it’s the NBA’s 21st-highest-paid player, Evan Mobley, who can buy the most homes. Mobley’s $46 million salary is equivalent to a whopping 190 median-priced homes, proving that it’s all about location when it comes to homebuying. Cleveland makes all other NBA cities look exorbitant with its low median home price of $243,400.
It’s no surprise then that the player who can buy the second-highest number of homes is Cade Cunningham from the Detroit Pistons. Detroit’s median home price of $293,900 is low enough that Cunningham can buy 157 homes with his $46 million salary.
With a median single-family home price of nearly $1.5 million, San Francisco is a tough city to buy a home in, even for Golden State Warriors’ shooting guard Will Richard. Richard’s is the lowest-paid player on the Warriors’ roster with a $1.2 million salary—an amount that falls short of home prices in the Bay Area. If a professional athlete’s salary cannot cover the price of a median-priced home, what hope do minimum wage workers have?
Fortunately, most cities are a lot more affordable than San Francisco. This is most evident in Oklahoma City, where the median-priced home is just $269,500. Ajay Mitchell, the lowest-paid player on the Oklahoma City Thunder, can buy an impressive 11 homes with his $3 million paycheck.
Similarly, San Antonio, Memphis, Cleveland, New Orleans, and Detroit’s low median home prices of under $320,000 afford their lowest-paid players at least four homes. For instance, Bismack Biyombo, Jaylen Wells, and JD Davison’s salaries all cover the cost of at least six homes despite all earning under $2.3 million.
So while players in high-cost-of-living cities won’t be able to ball on a budget, those in lower-cost-of-living cities can stretch their money farther. This same logic applies to the average homebuyer. It’s often easier for buyers to climb the property ladder by investing in low-cost-of-living areas first, and then using the equity built to purchase a more expensive home in a higher-cost-of-living city.
The wealth gap between the highest- and lowest-paid NBA players is steep. In the country’s most expensive cities, the salary gap can mean the difference between being a homeowner and not.
The lowest-paid players’ salaries in Los Angeles and New York can hardly cover the price of one median-priced home, while the top-paid players earn enough money to buy 50+ homes. For instance, the Lakers’ Adou Thiero will earn $1.2 million this season, while Luka Doncic will take home $54 million. Doncic’s salary translates to 61 homes, bought at the LA median price of $879,900, while Thiero’s salary equals just one home.
While being unable to purchase more than one home is nothing to complain about, the wealth gap highlights how expensive homes have become. A million dollars used to symbolize luxury, but now a million-dollar salary is just enough to cover the cost of a typical family home in most major metros in America today. And unlike NBA players, the average person’s salary isn’t keeping pace with inflation.
In the 2015-2016 season, Kobe Bryant was the highest-paid player at $25 million. Ten years later, Stephen Curry’s $59.6 million salary represents a 138% increase from Bryant’s. During the ten years from 2014 to 2024, the annual mean wage increased by just 43.8% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So while professional sports salaries rise, the average salary lags far behind.
Do You Really Need a $1M Salary to Afford a Home Now?
More households than ever have a million dollars. A 2022 Federal Reserve survey revealed that 18% of households had a net worth of at least seven figures. But most people only reach that status after a lifetime of investing. For middle-class families, the most common way to build equity is through their primary residence. So it’s not just basketball players with million-dollar contracts who can reach millionaire status; strategic homebuyers can too.
Although cash buyers are at an all-time high, with 26% of home purchases last year paid with cash, the majority of homebuyers still take out a mortgage. That means the average buyer won’t need to earn the full price of a home before being able to buy one.
For example, if you bought a home at the national median price of $426,800, your monthly mortgage payment would be $2,095 (assuming a 20% down payment and a 30-year fixed rate of 6.22%). To comfortably afford that mortgage, you’d need to earn at least $83,856 per year while spending 30% or less of your income on housing — a fraction of the NBA’s million-dollar salaries.
With that being said, housing is undoubtedly getting more expensive. According to a recent Zoocasa survey of 1,000 Americans, one in four homeowners spent more than they had planned for when buying their home. So if you happen to be the star point guard for a major basketball team, having a few extra million in your back pocket certainly gives you an advantage in the competitive real estate market.
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