When they left a few years ago it left a hole in this area, no one has been able to fill those shoes. 

A 1031 exchange (45 days to find another property, 180 days to close) might something to think about.If I was in your shoes:1.

The guy with 3 posts may be offering legitimate advice having been in your shoes- The guy with 30 years experience may be hopelessly out of date, or even inexperienced with current issues.- The 23 year old who just bought the first house-hack may teach us something game-changing.The “real deal” looks very different in many contexts: THAT is the power of BiggerPockets.

If I were in your shoes, I would first evaluate the area, and if it fits my criteria and I know what kind of tenant I can put in there I would continue to the next step:Finding out how much it would cost to rehab and what kind of rents I can achieve. 

@Steven SullivanI was in your shoes some years ago.

In these cases you need to  the tax sale process to clean up the title.Put yourself in the owner's shoes - if the property had equity, they'd probably have tried to sell it before falling several years behind on their taxes. 

If you were in my shoes with this amount of money what would you do or where would you start?

Remember, they were once in your shoes too.

Sure, you can track everything just using a spreadsheet or you can use the "shoe box" method for your receipts (I've done both!)

Both are 2/1's in what Rebbeca calls the "Shoe Store Neighborhoods".