However, I would avoid neighborhoods where the vast majority of the homes are owner occupied and all of the homes are really well kept - you can do a quick search on county GIS or software and click on the homes to see if they are owned in personal names or LLCs. 

You're definitely on the right track with investing your time in real estate and getting active on BP!

The vast majority of "regular" or traditional (Conv/Govt) mortgages are originated by specialty lenders and brokers and are sold in the secondary market to provide yield on bank balance sheets (think Chase or BoA) or to be securitized into MBS.

Maybe if you can prove that you are actively trying to gain compliance, that will get you the much needed time to gather $, time to pull the permit and ppl to perform the work bc they will have a bit of mercy on you bc you are trying to do the right thing. 

Keep your name active and keep analyzing and looking for deals.

How active are you wanting to be in the deal?

I think there are two maybe 3 ways to look at this in my mind.  1) you go into it and bring it all up to modern standards but using that old charm to basically take what is there bring it up to modern standards and rent it out essentially I'm thinking cocktail bar or something trendy like that.2) most banks are on really good centrally located real estate if this is true, then I'd consider it for the dirt, plan to scrape the lot and go vertical with whatever the highest and best use is.3) a kind of combo of the two, if the lot is in a good location and its doable, pull the vaults or other "character pieces" out of the building, scrape the lot, and build whatever is best suited for the site there, but incorporate those historical pieces into the final designs.Is the site near a major retail area? 

Still stay active in BP though because there is a lot of wisdom in this group. 

🏡 We saw the number of active listings at 8,875 houses still on market to end the month, vs. 10,934 at the end of October (see chart above).

Not knowing who the person is and hiring them without seeing an active job or a job they have ever done 2.