This is the same thing that happened back in the day. I remember seeing ads to buy castles in Europe for under $10,000. I made a quip about it to my boss and he said he was seriously looking into it as he was really big into real estate at the time.

He assumed he would have to put some money into it, but not the millions the fine print said they would need to invest to bring it up to a livable standard - which required a ton of construction, electrical and plumbing as a starter. He kind of scoffed at it once he started learning all of the details.

I also remember seeing the same thing when entire blocks of houses were being sold during the housing crash after 2008. Majority of the houses were in really bad neighborhoods (the ads for houses in Detroit were eye opening) or conversely way TF out in never never land where some developer decided to build some neighborhood development that went belly up after the crash and was stuck with half finished houses and no way to pay to get them finished.

It's also in, if you'll pardon my saying so, located in a shit-hole place to live. Look at the building across the street on google street view.

> With $120,000 owed in back taxes due by you upon purchase.

How does it work in the US? Are taxes on the property itself? This feels weird. I would have thought that the property can only be sold if everything is OK with it (no litigation, liens, etc), and taxes are owed by persons? Is it different over there?

Yes, you are basically just buying the land underneath.

123,000 is still very cheap

$123,000 still not terrible if the home is worth 5 time that.

Yeah, "almost certainly needs serious work" in that first home was doing some serious heavy lifting - the roof has collapsed and the foundation has sunk.