What advice can you offer to those who are faced with deciding if they should restore or if they should rebuild flood damaged property?

I have been tempted by the tear down and rebuild wave that's happening there.

Some will not want to deal with the rebuilding process.  

Demo should be cheap (vs rebuild) because anyone can do it....and I imagine there are people who cannot go back to school/work who need money.

It seems like in a lot of the neighborhoods I've looked the ARV just won't support a ton of work on the properties even if you can get them for next to nothing.I was looking at a house that I could likely pick up for about 5k at a tax sale, but I couldn't find a way to make the numbers work as the amount of rehab it needs seems to be almost a complete rebuild and the ARV would probably only land in the $125k range or maybe $1200 rents.

Particularly as the housing stock had supposedly come down quite a bit, and with rebuilding needed, there was going to be a strong demand to take up any vacancy in any of the existing apartments.With this thought, I put a bid to purchase a larger apartment complex in Houston.

Its going to require small companies that can finance homeownership to rebuild value in neighborhoods.

Sounds like fix and flip, though sounds like it might be scrape and rebuild.

Something else you might consider is the age of the foundation & will the county let you re-build on it.

My carry cost are around $400/mo and its eating me alive. i used signature loan 9k to purchase along with 10k of savings to rehab and all work of total gut and rebuild and new floor plan was done without permits.