Abandoned property, lots of equity

[Eric NA]

I haven't talked to this home owner or been in the property, but I wanted to throw some ideas out there and see what you guys can come up with.

In an area I'm relatively familiar with, there's a home that's been abdoned for at least 1 year now. Apparently the owners kids used to live in the property but moved out a while ago. The house was purchased in 1984 for 75K, which means that on a 30 year loan, 7.5%, 100% loan, they would owe at the most 26K now. The owner lives about 5 miles away. The house is missing a staircase and deck that leads up to the 2nd story master bedroom. Supposedly the inside needs some work but I have not been in or looked in to see how extensive.

Oddly, the owner paid to have a brand new fence put in not long ago because the old one was in horrible condition, but basically no other work has been done on the property and there is no attempt to rent/sell it.

Other properties in the area are going for 125-150K. The house is decent size at 1,900 square feet.

I'm doing my best to think of ways I could approach the owner with a win-win solution, but I can't come up with how I could make this work. I currently only have 5K of my own money to work with so it's unlikely I'll be able to cover the cost of fixing it back up and getting it ready to sell/rent with just that money.

What would you do here? Subject to? Owner finance? Find a hard money lender?