Crap for 1 to 15k per house if you have to just abandon one because it did not work no biggee.. you have lost next to nothing monetarily. keep the ones that work throw away the garbage let them go for tax's.If your sitting in CA or AU or GB  or other foreign countries and you think these cheap homes are going to make you rich.. then your just perpetuating the greater fool theory in my mind... and the end of the day simple logic has to dictate.. if houses on the open market were any investor  experienced or not can purchase them for 1 to 5k  well then there is a reason.. and there is a reason that in LA or SF or PDX or SEA  or New York or Boston or other prime markets that values are where they are at.. supply demand and ability to pay for the asset.Detroit bottom line just needs to retrench.. if its only 700k pop now and declining and there were housing stock for double that.. it does not take a genius to understand there is a gross over supply and the better owners or tenants are not going to live in the roughest and most dangerous areas of the city they will flee to safer more stable environs because there are massive amounts of homes that can be bought in nice areas for 100k and under.

Is anyone on BP renting out shipping containers as self storage with any success?

Bottom line, unless you're buying a mansion, I would say throw that inspection in a file for storage. 

Upon entry I noticed the master had been used as some sort of industrial storage facility for drugs.  

In other words, does it include shared/public areas such as lobbies, stairwells, storage etc.

Often times you may find the permits records only go back 5 years and a search for years further back may be more involved as they may be somewhere on an old microfiche is storage or the may not be available at all. 

The second floor ( hay mow) of the old barn was used for grain storage when it was used as a feed mill.  

You could post the offer letter on dropbox, google drive, or any other cloud storage - make sure to set permissions to "anyone with the link", not just "everyone on the web".

So it would depend on your market: are there more people who make 120k a year who don't want to (or can't) buy a house or people who make $9/hr who can't buy a house.Another aspect is the ability to add value to an apartment complex from raising rent, adding coin-op laundry (debatable on the profitability), rental storage, soda/vending machines not to mention the natural appreciation.

As far as the rent, I am familiar with the rent in this market and I'm confident I would at minimum be able to get $550/unit, plus the additional income the detached garage will generate as a storage unit.Thank you for your feedback, and I will keep you updated on the outcome!