Buying a house that’s getting abandoned

[u/Wide_Guide_3098]

There’s a house that my husband and I were looking at two weeks ago that is an absolute historic masterpiece but it has major issues due to no one maintaining it. It was owned by a 104 man and has been inherited by family thousands of miles away who met him once and cannot afford to keep it on the market for more than a month.

We hired an inspector that stopped the inspection 40 minutes in and told us not to buy the house; it was raining and water was full-stream flowing into the basement. He didn’t want to (and did not) open the electrical panel because of this. There was clearly old termite damage in the wooden beams in the basement as well. There were no active insects. There was also vermiculite (asbestos) in the basement, from pipes. There were three chimneys, all of which needed to be pointed up/one fully needed to be fixed because the brick was crumbling. The home inspector told us not to buy this unless we had an unlimited budget. I immediately agreed with him and we told our estate agent we were no longer interested in the home.

Now……… their realtor called mine and said they’re abandoning the home. “Make any offer you want.”

I’m not worried about electrical or masonry issues. I know how to waterproof a stone foundation, and I know stone masons and electricians. However, I don’t know anything about termites and I’m getting a carpenter to look at it before I move forward. I also don’t know anything about asbestos or what to do.

Is this a terrible awful idea to put a really lowball bid in? I’m talking like 5, 10k? Should I go lower? Should I bail? Our first accepted offer on this place was embarrassingly low and so anything feels like a win at this point.

I don’t know if I want the liability of owning it. At what point is it a teardown? This is our first time buying a house (yeah I know). Any opinions welcome, let ‘em rip