If the seller has a complicating factor, I might be the only offer in town.

The way I calculate things, if the deciding factor is the difference between the sale price of the old house and the total price of the new houses, that would be a $90,000 difference.

They are manufactured in a huge factory to spec. 

Obviously none of they knew of the fire or looked at the property in the last few days.At tax sale I have seen people have bought:US Army bombing rangeExpired lease on propertyhouse with 3 walls, 4th wall missingsliver of land 2 feet wide50 foot cliff, access by helicopter onlyland at bottom of man made lake (literally underwater property)wetlandsflood plainsunbuildable propertyfailed perk testhistoric dig site, can't disturbproperty with no road frontagecondemned propertyproperty already scheduled for demolition soonformer gas station with leaking gas and oil tanks undergrounddry cleaning plant with toxic wasteSuper fund sitechromium factory with tanks and barrels of an unknown liquiddistillery with full barrells (ATF and state government was very interested and wanted to seize and destroy those barrells)Bigger Pockets Podcast #82 

First factor is that I had a really big ticket item come up out of the blue and wanted to pump the brakes after that happened (had to get creative to absorb the cost). 

wow thanks everyone for your input- definitely seeing some varying perspectives- the building is in poor condition, but the area does have some serious potential- however @Troy S. is making me think the hassle factor is going to be very high, and the property would need serious capex to get it to an average renter's condition

Right now our limiting factor is cash for the down payment but we are way under our means right now.Long term i envision paying off our first in 12 years and keeping it as a rental.

Another factor is most larger institutions (National lenders, Fannie/Freddie) prefer owner occupied buyers & are making repairs to properties so they will conform to FHA financing requirements, while putting time restrictions on investor offers essentially freezing them out of the market.

The second factor is that many of these properties that have sold between 35K and 65k in better times have been selling for under 30K .

Other still other times it makes sense to refi and IRR tells you to do so, but  you use more qualitative data (like the fact you know the factory down the street is closing) to make a decision.