Or could it just be that no-one else wanted them? Market price plus 10% plus expenses is not 'pretty much zero'. It's a whole lot better than many people who didn't have a stadium next door managed. If anyone has complained since, who has seen it?
And the current owners played no long game. People got more than the houses were worth in pretty short order.
Has anyone complained. Really. ?
Ruth Little, Chair of the Anfield and Breckfield community council, says: "After people suffered so much, from the football club and Your Housing leaving properties empty and blighting the area, when they went back to the original plan I did wonder what the last 12 years of consultation have been for.
Ros Groves, chair of the Salisbury Residents Association, said she "hit the roof" when she read that Ian Ayre said Liverpool would "need to convince" residents if the club were to stay at Anfield, and said: "We're having some great dialogue with them." Groves said; “Liverpool FC have never held any meaningful discussions with residents.”
"I cannot see how it can be called 'great dialogue' when Ian Ayre has been to one meeting with one residents group," Groves said. "Everybody can see which way this is going now. We just want Liverpool football club to be open with us." Many houses around Anfield have been blighted for years – a significant number bought by the football club and left empty, a source of great resentment among residents left coping with the area's decline.
James McKenna, chair of the Spirit of Shankly supporters' union, says the fans have sympathy for the club's neighbours. "The stadium expansion is all about the club making more money, and fans will have to pay more for tickets," McKenna says. "To do that, Liverpool have played a part in derelict houses, streets boarded up. It's a blot on LFC's record.
ill McGarry, vice-chair of the Anfield Rockfield Triangle Residents Association, said: "People have suffered blight and are entitled to adequate compensation, real replacement value of their homes, particularly given what the football club stands to gain. There has to be some social justice about this."
Patrick Duggan, chair of the Anfield Rockfield Triangle Residents Association, is an ardent critic of the club, whom he vehemently accuses of running the area down. "I have always been a Liverpool fan," says Duggan, "They play 'You'll Never Walk Alone' but they have left their neighbours to walk alone for years."
Howard Macpherson, now 52, was the first to sell his house on Lothair Road to the club, in 1996. He had lived there, at No 39, a four-bedroom end terrace, for 10 years. Macpherson says it was a fine home, which he had spent money refurbishing, but after Liverpool bought it they always left it empty – now for 17 years.
"Anfield was a good area, all the houses occupied, nothing like it is today," says Macpherson, who runs a garage, Aintree Motors. "The area started to decline in the early 1990s with the city's economic problems. But Liverpool football club accelerated the decline, by leaving good houses empty and boarded up. It wasn't a natural decline; it was engineered."
Paddy McKay, a builder who has lived for 37 years on Walton Breck Road, is refusing to accept the council's offer. He and his wife Carol brought up three daughters there; he has paid his mortgage off in full and argues that, if he is forced to move, he should be paid enough to buy a similar house somewhere decent and compensation for the years of blight. Even now, antisocial behaviour is continuing on those streets, including house fires.
"Liverpool FC have said they want to be good neighbours? They're the world's worst neighbours; they couldn't care less," McKay says. "After all the damage they have done to the area, they should do the decent thing by the residents."
Mrs Highfield, Lothair Road resident said: I am 60 years old and I moved into this road in 1953 with my parents, my mother died very young, and my father looked after myself and my older brother. Eventually I was married and brought up my 3 lovely children in the house I have always lived in, Lothair Road was once a lovely happy residential area.
As time passed and my father got older he became housebound, and when he could sit at the front door he would become very upset at having to look at boarded up houses in front of him and all around him, to think he had scrimped and saved to pay for his house all to see it come to the shambles surrounding the once very admired road.
We have had to waited long enough. 10 - 15 years is a very long time and the blight started even before that. I am absolutely heartbroken for my poor dad who died 5 years ago, and now for myself and my children.
Evan Roberts, Lothair road resident/retired fire-fighter said: One can only speculate that perhaps enough properties in the road have now been secured in order for the rest to be made the objects of compulsory purchase orders and then demolished.
Many residents believe that LFC expansion is the major reason why so many homes in the Rockfield area have been left derelict for more than a decade. Long-term decisions have been made in the interest of LFC while the wider implications of what those decisions have done to this community - have been negated. We know it started years before FSG became owners - but it still continues under their ownership.
Garry Houghton, Alroy road home-owner, said: I think this should go to a public inquiry, the whole thing is just for LFC’s benefit with the city council acting as the go between. Joe Anderson we know your real motive is profit. The land you unlawfully obtain from residents will be leased to LFC, we want a public inquiry!
Wake up, the city council are the problem, most of the residents don't trust the council. This mess could have been dealt with years ago, if only David Moores and Rick Parry had been bothered to talk to residents of Lothair/Alroy/Rockfield and Walton Breck Road.
Why didn't Ian Ayre speak to residents 5 years ago? He's always sprouting on about great dialogue with residents! We don't know what residents this dialogue was with? It wasn't with anyone affected by CPO and demolition to clear the way for LFC expansion, that's a bit strange don't you think?
Is that enough people for you Peter.
The funniest bit though is market value plus 10%. You know full well that once the streets were full of derelict boarded up houses the property values crashed in value. When the value of your house falls by 30-40% then market value plus 10% leaves you massively out of pocket and unable to afford a similar property.