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Ed Sheeran has amassed a £57 million property empire and hasn't borrowed a penny from the banks to finance it.
The 29-year-old singer has put his alleged £200 million fortune to good use by paying for his properties in cash, including 22 houses and apartments in London alone.
As well as buying up in the capital, Ed has a sprawling estate in Suffolk, that has a number of properties in a 'mini-village' created by the chart-topping star.
It is a far cry from the moment that Ed slept rough in front of Buckingham Palace, riding the tube so he somewhere to sleep.
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Fame brought fortune and Ed decided to shun any loans from financial institutions and pay for the lot in notes.
Among Ed's property purchases are a £20 million pad in London's Notting Hill as well as splashing out a combined £5.5 million on two adjacent properties on Portobello Road, where he opened his restaurant, Bertie Blossoms.
After parting with £895,000 in 2012 for a house in rural Suffolk near his hometown, Ed then upped the spending to £4 million by building a further five houses to create an estate that has been dubbed 'Sheeranville'.
Ed had set up a company in 2015 with manager Stuart Camp called Maverick Properties and he has purchased some of the houses through there as well as using his own fortune.
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An insider told The Sun: “He has a great portfolio of properties and he owns the lot free and clear. There was no need to borrow the cash from a lender because he already had it.
“Some people have the cash tied up so need to raise a mortgage but Ed has piles of the cash in the bank so there was no point in letting a bank earn money by lending him the money. He just bought them outright.”
Ed described his days sleeping rough in London as he tried to make his musical breakthrough, in his book A Visual Journey.
He wrote: “I didn’t have anywhere to live for much of 2008 and the whole of 2009 and 2010, but somehow I made it work.
"I knew where I could get a bed at a certain time of night and I knew who I could call at any time to get a floor to sleep on. Being sociable helped. Drinking helped.
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“I spent a week catching up on sleep on Circle Line trains.
"I’d go out and play a gig, wait until 5am when the Underground opened, sleep on the Circle Line until 12, go to a session - and then repeat.
"It wasn’t that bad. It’s not like I was sleeping rough on the cold streets.”
