> But if you did, would you end up with Capitol-Hill like appreciation in 40 years??? My friend recently applied this same concept in a very rough area of Sout

> But if you did, would you end up with Capitol-Hill like appreciation in 40 years??? My friend recently applied this same concept in a very rough area of South Bend, Indiana buying a house with bullet holes in the side using the same general logic ("it'll get gentrified someday"). The issue he's running into is that it turns out a city doesn't have to charge you property taxes on the actual sale price (which was only $3k) but can charge you property taxes on a higher amount of their choosing ($40k I think he said) in order to encourage revitalization and not just hoarding of slum houses, probably. He's trying to fight that property tax assessment, but I'm not a lawyer and neither is he and he'll probably lose. In which case the holding costs defeat his whole plan.