What to do about "less-than" locations?

[Leann W.]

I'm gonna go out on a limb. In my town (as in most towns) there are depressed areas where people do live, but you would be hard-pressed to find any real estate investors at work in those areas, buying and flipping, etc. If you troll your local MLS... you can find outrageous "cheap" properties for sale, BUT when you dig deeper you learn that it's in "that" area of town, a rough neighborhood, depressed- whatever you wanna call it. I wonder about the risk and feasibility of trying to do rehab/flip work in those areas. Vandalism fears run pretty deep. What if no one wants to buy your rehab BECAUSE it's in "that" neighborhood? EVERYONE (supposedly) wants a decent place to live. Surely breathing life back into these areas would be a good thing, right? Am I pipe dreaming?

I would be interested in hearing from some of our BP folks on this kind of thing.  Is it doable?  Was it a waste of time?