can it be repurposed into something more profitable (and does the owner care)? 

classic.

.~$250k in equity in our small condo in Boulder, CO (worth about $530k right now) - we owe about $280k for 12 more years of a 15 year refiEmergency fund worth of cash (a bit low) and some insignificant retirement accounts ($10k and $30k, respectively)"Good" self-employment income, around $150k for both of us (it's all relative and that feels like pennies in Boulder)About $20k in credit card debt which should get paid off in a matter of a few months (we had some extraneous expenses in the recent past; long story; "won't happen again")About $16k car loan on my wife's Real Estate Mobile (she is a RE agent here in Boulder)I feel like we're the "Sam" character in Chapter 12 of the book - classically calculating our net worth looks OK, but calculating our "Real Net Worth" comes out depressingly negative.We really want to get started in REI, but of course we need to pay off our credit card debt and probably the car loan and save up $X first.Right?

I'm going to be closing on a vacant property in a tougher area soon and besides putting an alarm system in, we're also looking into options for boarding it up.There's the classic plywood option of course, which is almost certainly the cheapest but also looks awful and advertises "vacant/abandoned property".In the last few years it seems like a few other options have come up: VPS (vps360.com) steel door & window coveringsSecureView (secureviewusa.com) clear boarding, used by FNMAInvisiBoard (products.cyprexx.com/InvisiBoard)Dawgs (dawgsinc.com) steel and clear boardingI know I've seen a few VPS protected properties around in my area. 

These are "classical", time proven results taught in business MBA classes. 

Muttins are very common in historical or classical houses. 

Classic 30 year stuff for the plane Jane non owner occupied investment property.

In other words, if you believe the building will appraise for $650,000, you'll need $520,000 of equity for the classic refi to dump your PMI.Less obvious solutions involve 90% LTV loans with no PMI (though the rate is usually a bit higher, it still results in big savings compared to FHA PMI,) or an 80/10/10 loan, which is similar to the first option but involves a second loan (which could also even be cash out.)

Like folks that keep beat up old classic cars on their properties and just let them rust away. 

If I put money "into the business" it's to buy more properties, it's not for what I should classically think of as "business operations".