Family who paid £1 for their home
Delight as they kick off plan to bring life back to derelict area
EVEN the cheapest homes usually have a few noughts in the price – but not this one.
Just £1 was enough to buy the derelict four-bedroomed house in a run-down district of Liverpool yesterday.
Despite the drawbacks, including a potential £35,000 bill for refurbishment, new owner Jayalal Madde, 48, is delighted.
The taxi driver is the first to benefit from a scheme to revitalise neighbourhoods blighted for years by hundreds of boarded-up homes.
They fell into disrepair as residents left and nobody wanted to move in.
Mr Madde, his wife, Chaminda, 48, and two daughters Sansali, 12, and Simali, ten, will stay renting while
‘I am the happiest man in the world’
they spend a year making their terraced house in Cairns Street, Granby, habitable.
‘I am the happiest man in the world,’ he said. ‘We can’t wait to move in. It has always been our dream to own our own home. I’ve been saving up for years, and trying to get loans and a mortgage.
‘But then I came across the scheme and decided to apply. Now we can use the money we saved to refurbish the house.’
Mr Madde, who moved to Liverpool from his native Sri Lanka eight years ago, was among 1,000-plus applicants vying to buy one of 20 properties in the pilot council scheme.
If successful, up to 160 more empty properties in the Granby, Picton and Kensington areas of the city, will be brought back into use. However, the cheap price comes with tough criteria, including living or working in Liverpool, being a first-time buyer and having a job.
Buyers must bring the property up to the Decent Homes Standard, the official minimum for council homes, within 12 months, live there for at least five years and not sub-let it in that time.
Mr Madde’s home is structurally sound but needs to be converted from two flats as well as new wiring, plumbing, windows and flooring.
He is the first of ten initial buyers to be allocated properties and was handed his keys by the Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson.
‘It was emotional because I could see how much it meant to Mr Madde and his family,’ said Mr Anderson.
Despite Granby’s problems, a small community still persists, many of whom who have lived there for years. The hope is the area will start to flourish with the new arrivals.