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LAST YEAR, LIVERPOOL City Council began selling abandoned houses for just £1.

The idea was simple – some areas of Liverpool became completely uninhabited following the decline of the city’s shipyards in the 1980s and 1990s.

With vast stretches of Liverpool all but derelict, the city council offered the abandoned houses for the symbolic figure of £1, provided that the new owner would take on renovation costs.

The initiative was imitated elsewhere, from sunny Sicily to not-so-sunny Stoke on Trent. The first 20 houses listed triggered more than 1,000 requests and the houses are currently being transacted.

More houses are expected to hit the marker in the future: Loverpool has about 160 more to allocate.

The homes are all located about five kilometres east of the city centre, in the area of Edge Hill:

Stefano Pozzebon / Google Maps Stefano Pozzebon / Google Maps / Google Maps

Some of the houses are nice Victorian terraces, with a bit of garden in the front:

Google Street View Google Street View

They were clearly in need of a massive renovation when the pictures were taken:

But this one, for example, has a nice pair of houses on each side, and looks promising:

Some other bidders were not that lucky:

Google Street View Google Street View

Google Street View Google Street View

Left or right, both of them for £1. Which one do you fancy?

Google Street View Google Street View

The neighbourhood looks very empty, which we suppose is the point of the scheme:

Google Street View Google Street View

- Stefano Pozzebon

Read: THAT Love/Hate apartment block is for sale for a cool €3.5m>

Read: Galway man denied squatters’ rights after living in house for 16 years>