Ideas for structuring potential purchase

[Colin Buckley]

I have yet to contact the owner of this property.  2/1 with detached garage.  It is literally next door to my present rental property.  It was purchased two years ago (17.5k), and the new owner has done essentially nothing with the property.  He'll come by every few months, but all he's done that I'm aware of is drop a bunch of wooden fence panels on the back porch and park a car in the garage for a few months.  This is probably the ugliest house/yard on the block, and fixing it up would also probably up the desirability of my rental next door.

The owner is behind on property tax payments.  He has two payments due for the property this year, and as of yesterday, he is now behind on both and incurring penalties.  I looked into the owner, and he is a realtor that owns at least five properties relatively nearby (within a few miles), and lives about half an hour away.  He is also behind on one other property tax payment that I can see.  (Information gathered from Google searching his name looking for online county records.)

I don't have the cash up-front to do a cash offer, and the house is too cheap for a bank to be interested, so naturally I landed on seller financing as a potential path in, assuming he's interested in selling.  I've thought of something along the lines of paying him the back taxes owed + penalties (~2k) as a "down payment" and making payments from there with whatever terms.

As he is a realtor, I'm sure he knows the tools and tricks of the trade.  How can I approach him with this in a way that he'll a) take me seriously, and b) give me the time of day?  As he's a realtor, should I abandon the plan, as if he wanted to sell he easily could in theory?

I am also open to any other creative financing routes I could utilize.  I don't have too much in the way of other assets (~$4.5k in a current 401(k), conservatively ~$12k equity in my current rental (value ~20k).

Any input?  I will 100% admit that I don't know exactly what I'm doing and am not yet an expert of any kind.  Thanks.