My only concern was if I attach him to the loan with "cash equity", will his credit reflect an outstanding loan (the 80% being financed)?

Keep your personal safety in mind always.If you are given this time to reflect on your business, and your gut is telling you to take this in a different direction, then the solution will come to you.

It just sits there and gets progressively more and more overgrown with the risk of falling into disrepair.As I have little investable cash right now to buy such assets outright, I would like to approach owners of such buildings to negotiate and agree to let at a discount rate that reflects the current state of the property, pay for the cleanup & marketing and then sublet at a profit to a Third Party when the building looks tidy again.

Perhaps a Texas person will chime in here and fill in  the details.An actual assumable loan has a defined process for approving the new debtor, transferring the loan into that person's name and recording the appropriate documents to reflect the change.With a few noteworthy exceptions, as long as the payments keep coming in on time, most lenders will "go after bigger fish", so to speak.

It will certainly reflect in my offer (pending a thorough inspection).

Also, the investor's offer usually reflects his inspection of the property.

The data also reflected almost no movement in or out of Illinois for anyone under an income level of $49,000.

As it stands right now, as long as I am keeping it as a rental it will stay as-is as any cost would not be reflected much in any gain in rent.

But if that inflation was a gentle increase (not like what happened in the 70's), then after a time lag RE starts to reflect the added cost of living, as rents go up as a result of inflation.

The jumps you see in the graph are not an accurate reflection of what actually happened with the population.