To buy a lot outright its usually around $150k or so, depending on area of town.

@Seth Rose real estate is a small world.

Unless you are a seasoned real estate investor with professional title searching skills, I wouldn't do this.

Of course you could do both, depending what kind of capital you have.

It depends on the guy you get, but typically not a big deal.

That's a fantastic quote to live by, especially in real estate where learning from others' experiences can save you a lot of time, money, and headaches.

If you don't live in Washington then join all the "Washington/Seattle Real Estate Investor Groups" on Facebook and ask this question in each one.

Back prior to covid, real estate investing was buying strategically and somehow adding value.

I think there are two maybe 3 ways to look at this in my mind.  1) you go into it and bring it all up to modern standards but using that old charm to basically take what is there bring it up to modern standards and rent it out essentially I'm thinking cocktail bar or something trendy like that.2) most banks are on really good centrally located real estate if this is true, then I'd consider it for the dirt, plan to scrape the lot and go vertical with whatever the highest and best use is.3) a kind of combo of the two, if the lot is in a good location and its doable, pull the vaults or other "character pieces" out of the building, scrape the lot, and build whatever is best suited for the site there, but incorporate those historical pieces into the final designs.Is the site near a major retail area? 

Basically questions that the PM/co-host need to be able to answer without having to do any deep-dive analysis.Property-specific questions such as property improvement advice, revenue potential, etc. that involve deep-dive analysis might justifiably incur an up-front cost depending on the PM/co-hosts business model.