If your market has older homes, known bad soil conditions, weather events, etc etc.

It's a like a typical suburb where the homes and land underneath are fully owned by the homeowner, but all of the houses are mobile homes.

Underneath the carpet wood is there.

do they have steel ibeams underneath like a mobile home?

When talking with them ask them the type of parcels they are looking for and what sort of characteristics they need such as size, location, soil types, topography.   

But if you evaluate the area, the property, and then aim to make sure you're operating at cash flow breakeven or better, that's where you're going to win big in Detroit.What you're saying is correct, but let's go underneath the surface here.

The pee had gotten underneath a small end cabinet.

In my area this situation is common was mostly caused by work done 75+ years ago before modern regulations existed.In fact I own such as house where the house behind me has their sewer connecting to my line underneath my house!

-Site work: typically $10K is a good number to start with, which includes preparing the building pad, connecting utilities, plus a small amount of landscape and concrete work.Other costs (not typically required): Additional structural engineering, Civil engineering, Soils engineeringAlso, the cost would be around $75K for a standard garage conversion project of about 400 sqft....$8-10K for plans/design/engineering, $3-5K permits/fees, rest construction costs.

Makes sense when thinking about it- the US offers that as an incentive for investing on US soil, I don't think the govt wants to actively encourage foreign investment by giving us a domestic benefit.