Already a lot to think about and further areas to investigate.

Goggle is your friend, the information you find may well be hazardous, so I suggest you read government sites, blogs at law firms, law schools are another good source, you should know the difference between guru crap, public forums and an educational or legal information site.Most newbies really don't want to know, they want to believe, so if you really want to know just call your state real estate commission, ask to speak to an examiner or investigator or council.

But a particular city within the county has experienced significantly higher rent growth than other similar cities in counties with growing populations but stagnant rents for the past 20 years (an extremely common trend in the midwest, prob not columbus though).Then there's the "that city's population declined 10%", but further investigation shows an environmental crisis caused 10% of the housing supply to be deemed uninhabitable in the area... causing a population to decrease, but a massive surge in rental demand and market rents, but not an increase in value because investors see a surface level statistic without truly understanding the market dynamics, or looking at direct indicators of an asset's performance (rental demand) instead of indirect indicators (population growth).That last situation has actually happened to me, and I managed to grab over 60 small MFR buildings at  15-20 caps over about 2 years and sell them at 10 caps.

This is because taxes are so low and the population is so small, the tax base is inadequate for police to have the resources to actually investigate or prosecute crime.

If you want to build in the zone anyway, you'll need a variance (probably).All this means you'll need professional help...but you can get free help (for now) by investigating local GIS resources, and reading up on the local requirements (probably from the DNR).

After further investigation what grabbed my attention the most, and still does to this day, were the tax benefits from owning property.

On investigation the average price in the current market for similar properties that were in good condition was 4.8 times average household income.

(numbers came from the bipartisan committee for cuts to be made) The "death panels were a pure fabrication and spin pushed to get stupid and uninformed people riled, those that obtain their political opinions based on what they are told,because they will never take the time or effort to investigate the facts.They were very successful, the evidence is right here with the subject brought up again!

I'll definitely have to do more investigating.  

Set aside visions of big and quick profits for a moment and investigate why you're getting such a great deal from this seller.