Went "Driving for Dollars" and discovered an owner with 5+ distressed/abandoned properties!

[André Palmer]

So I went biking (not driving) for dollars over the weekend and stumbled across a handful of abandoned/distressed properties. Come to find out after researching that 75% of them are owned by the same person. Whats going on here!? They are still paying taxes so why are they empty? Why aren't they making any repairs. How can they afford to own this many properties and just let them sit around and rot? 

I am definitely going to contact them asap but wanted to ask if anyone out there has run into a similar situation. Wanna be as prepared as possible and try to figure out as much as I can.