What would you do if you found 3 promising abandoned houses?

[Ty Jenkins]

I have a little experience with real estate investing through wholesaling, but I’ve stopped wholesaling years ago out of frustration and decided to wait until I have enough saved up and/or good enough credit to be an investor myself. Though I am not quite where I want to be in those areas, I feel that I will be by next year with my new career but I’ve found an opportunity that may not last by that time.

I was taking a ride through a nice neighborhood when my instincts to look for houses under distress kicked in. I turned down a dead end street and found my dream home and it was abandoned. Then I drove down a little further and found two more just like it! So I took pictures of them and wrote down the street address because I couldn’t find house numbers on them. These houses looked almost new but the window were broken or boarded up, the grass was over 3 feet high and just everything was unkept.

Afterwards I went back and began my research on these homes I saw that first I couldn’t even find these houses on street view of google maps so they may. Second, on Zillow this property only shows up as a lot estimated worth 15k. And lastly all 3 are owned by an llc. Then when I looked up the llc I saw an article dated May 2017 about the owner which they named walked away from several projects 15 years ago leaving them abandoned after his project was put on hold because of new environmental protections. It even mention the 3 homes saying they were unfinished. It also stated that if the time expires before the list of items is finished and a building permit is obtained, the developer forfeits its rights to develop the properties. And the land would become open space. And must be finished by June 2020.”

Obviously that time has past and I want to do whatever I can to capitalize on this opportunity. I love the area and the home looks great and I wouldn’t mind acquiring one for myself but I’m not sure I can afford to straight out pay for a home without a mortgage, left alone 3. And the the cost for repair may be out of my budget at the moment. I feel like I may be able to do so by next year but this opportunity many not be available by then. So what would you do if you were in my shoes?