In the early 90's we turned down a repo'd house in Lee (South East London)
3 beds, semi detatched, 2 bath, garden, garage, 5 mins from station, probably worth well over half a million quid today.
I think they were asking 40K for it, we estimated it would be at leat 40K more to make it livable. To say the place had been comprehensibly trashed is an understatment in trashing a place. The previous owners had removed every single thing that they could, right down to the tiles on the walls, the internal door frames, every single light fitting and socket, the paving outside, the roof insulation, etc and left most of it inside the house (all unusable of course). They had also arranged for several tipper loads of builders rubble to be dropped in the garden.
It would have been cheaper to simply bulldoze the site and start again, but the council were insisting the house could be refitted.
We thought about putting in an offer of 10k or so, but decided we did not need the grief.
Someone bought it and did it up, as it's still there, but I do wonder why the previous owners stopped at removal of sections of the foundations and adding some radioacive waste to really make it a liability. It was about the only thing they did not do