Vacant commercial land - how to make money

[Zlatan Omeragic]

Hello friends, 

I have noticed a vacant commercial lot here in Pittsburgh. The property itself is fenced off, looks to be overgrown, and has a fallen building on the property. Its actually what looks like about 4 walls of a bottom floor of a SFH-sized building. The building would need to be demolished of course.

The lot is on a street with only SFH and one block away from the business area of the neighborhood. Very near public transportation.

The owners are delinquent on taxes since 2012, though the total amount is less than $1000.

Anyway, I have never had experience with dealing with this sort of thing. Can money be made on something like this? How? What are the things to look for?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. 

[Joel Owens]

Land investing is generally a smaller part of the portfolio.

The reason is you are not depreciating the land for taxes and have intensive carrying costs ( money going out but nothing going in ) until you sell off the site or develop it yourself.

A commercial piece of land could sell in 1 year or 10 years. It depends on the growth patterns and when the timing is right for that parcel.