@Antonio Boone Ummmmm...so maybe a couple of things:
1.) Why haven't you driven by the house? I'm all for good ol' Google Maps but the image was captured in 2012. The thing could be a vacant lot by now, covered in snow, holes in the roof, massive water damage, etc. There's no way on the planet that if I was serious that I wouldn't have driven by, alone, last night, with a camera, taken 10 pictures, and posted a few here. If that's too burdensome there's about a zero percent chance you'd make it through the rehab process on a place like this. Man, I'm coming across as feisty today...
2.) Just off of the top of my head I'm going to say that it's the wrong property for you. If I were in your coworkers shoes and charities were passing on the place, I'd probably have called every property manager and residential construction company in the area and offered to sell it for $5K. At least a hypothetical family-owned construction business could eat their margin on the rehab costs to get a (hopefully) valuable property post-rehab. At the very least they could get materials at cost. If they can't see a margin/spread is doing the deal "at cost" that should tell you all that you need to know.
3.) Assuming zoning wouldn't get in the way, if the business next door just passed on the property it *probably* means that: Cost-to-demo > Value of raw land. Otherwise you'd take it for free, scrape, and even if you didn't put in a parking lot (capital intensive) you could fence off the lot and use it for storage of some kind. I can't imagine you're going to have massive property tax bills on a scraped lot.
Bottom line: Everyone has had a shot at the property. The constituents who should want the property (charities, the next door business, etc.) have no desire for it.
So maybe here's a way that I'd think about it... Have you ever randomly been at a gas station at around 3:00 a.m. and seen that one odd-looking shriveled hot dog left on those automated rollers under a heat lamp? It's been there for hours...hundreds have customers have walked by it...they might have bought other hot dogs...but that's the one that's left. If the kid behind the counter said "Hey, I just want to turn off the heat lamp, you can have that hot dog for free!" would you eat it?
