Marco Giovannoli If you want to do this on your own, I suggest you:- speak with a planning consultant to get a good idea of the approvals process and timeline; - speak with an engineering consultant will give you an idea of the costs involved with servicing a site that size and a reasonable timeframe to complete the work;- speak with the town planning department to get a sense of the town's view regarding the development and determine the paperwork/studies that will have to be submitted;- ask the vendor/broker if there is an environmental report done for the site to determine the extent to which soil remediation will need to be undertaken;If this is your first project, I highly suggest you find a developer to partner with in order to learn the process first.

I'll be in touch, but in short - my business partner and I acquired an environmentally-impaired property from a corporation that consolidated and relocated.  

They may require a Phase 1 environmental, and other requirements.  

Environmental report & inspection went as expected - as these reports all seem to be about cya.  

I think it totally depends, but I would probably start by going down to the city and seeing if you can get any information on it such as the owner, tax liens, environmental or zoning issues that could lead you to why it might be vacant.

Cody, a Class A building and Class C building would have different Cap Rates, so even with the same NOI they will have different values.And yes, an empty building may very well be worth $0 or less--if there are environmental concerns, for example.

The risk is that the tank leaks and you'll be looking at crippling cleanup costs.If it were me, I'd make my offer contingent on the tank being removed and the surrounding soil being tested by a licensed environmental testing contractor and coming back clean.

I'm reading the documents and they've flagged some environmental issues.

There's not really any way out unless, like people said above, there's a financing or appraisal contingency and the loan is contingent upon clean environmental or the removal of the tank.

Getting permits, zoning, environmental studies, etc are costly and discourage building new homes.