Look at other houses on the block.

It'll be more expensive, but I use an exterminator that blocks all the entries to a property and gives a 1-year guarantee.

I had to block him to stop it.

Screen your tenants, have good property management in place, hire a Realtor who can assess homes block by block & you should be in good shape. 

My aunt owns a building 2 blocks away from it so she has some knowledge regarding the building and also working with a realtor but we are currently getting more info like building history and etc to see if this is a situation of the owner wanting to dump it or if he is just too old now to deal with it anymore .

Starting part-time is great because it takes months to learn the basics AND get your business started.Time blocking will be extremely important.

In LA, surprisingly, duplexes are often priced comparable to the house two blocks away when they you're getting two homes.

Tenants can form unions and can simply block access.

There are some pockets either side of South Grand, but it's more block to block outside of TG South/southeast.

Within a couple blocks, you can go from the lowest priced lots to $500k+ vacant lots.