Some suburbs are aging, and almost immediately are being re-purposed as more affordable housing.  

It looks to me like the classic 70% rule makes this a worthy buy as long as the rehab costs don't exceed $60k. 

Are you going to repurpose the church or keep it as is?

I'm just not sure if I'll find a way to repurpose or save it before it becomes a hopeless derelict.   

That is the surety that the buyer has.You are one of the classic "if it's so easy, why doesn't everyone do it," people that every entrepreneur is warned not to listen to.I doubt it takes years to get a building permit unless that state is run by illiterate idiots.

Classic approach I'd say, I can see the line forming already!

Enough money to buy healthy meals if you don't like to cook, etc.But the one thing I can't generate any more of is time.In the next post I'll outline how we made the money and how long it took (about 30 years), and the event of fortunate timing and good luck that started it (my grandmother pushing my parents to buy some apartments after the S&L crisis around 1990 - when banks could barely give complexes away and you could do 90% leverage deals).I'm the fortunate son of a grandmother who had a classic value investor's eye (even though she was trained as a nurse) and who started buying single family homes back in the 1950's and renting them out.

Inventing something and turning it into a profitable business is a classical way to make that much money.For real estate you absolutely can get there, but you have to be willing to take on a lot of risk to do so.  

On their website, they even acknowledge that the name of their company was inspired by the classic Ayn Rand novel,.

A classic example might be the nation-wide demise of buggy whip manufacturing with the advent of the internal combustion engine.