House without a cellar

[Larry Jansen]

I'm looking a a home  for a flip which needs fairly extensive work but it looks to be manageable.

The house was listed as built on a slab but when I looked it turns out there is a crawl space and a cinder block foundation -house was built around 1955. 

The only look I could get at the crawl space was through a small hatch in a closet. The depth of the crawl space looks to be 2-3 feet and has a dirt floor - very hard to work in I'm sure. I wouldn't call this arrangement standard operating procedure for suburban Boston.

The furnace and oil tank are situated in an ajoining shed which buts up against the house.  

Does anyone have experience with a house such as this in the New England region? What are the pitfalls?

Larry J