What else would you do to mitigate the risk of environmental contamination that would cost more than the land is worth.Note that I am not concerned about minor contaminations that can be fixed for under $25,000.

This is not a good move on the banks part, but they tend to delay any costs as long as they can. 

This is hands down one of the best investments I've made in my own education (for contrast: my BS and doctorate cost me $250K, and for RE, apart from books, I recently spent $18K on a syndication coach and $5K on multifamily strategy with Christian & Cody) -- and her course was a fraction of these costs at only $2.5K (Soli: you should up your prices, you are worth it)!

But given our high cost city and sky rocketing interest rates, early and simple analysis of any property has so far resulted in negative cash flow. 

However they are slow and they will do their research to determine valuesWhoever the taxing authority is, they will look at the value of the property in its current condition, then subtract foreclosure costs, marketing and closing costs to arrive at a net value to them.

., replacement cost.

Cost up front was made clear about 10K.  

It increases cost and creates time pressure that he would not have from a straight sale.

Some people purchase a property for cost segregation/accelerated depreciation purposes to save on their taxes.

I can barely get firms to look at columbus with 10x years of experience thats mostly for ground up. the average house cost is still less than 100k which means you have a lot of houses to tear down still to create a housing shortage. the economics don't make it favorable for any type of investing but turn key or maybe ground up in the urban core which works in any city. but compare any of these cities, I'll take Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, and columbus and Milwaukee and pass on the rest.