When you buy a terrible house you have paid for someone else’s insoluble problem and made it your own. Perhaps I have a greater threshold for pain than a typical person, or just a deeper war chest that can digest nasty lemons and squeeze out some lemonade. The trade off must be you find that ‘diamond in the rough’ and it is so rough that nobody else can see the diamond part so you can get it at a lower price. Ideally the hardship is just hard enough that the competition doesn’t want it but not too hard it exceeds your personal management capacity. The new build experience certainly lowers the anxiety level when you get deep into a full on disassembly and rebuild scale reno. Maybe even a bit fun despite the horrible stuff.
While not much remains, there was not much good to start from on this one. This is why I felt opportunity was strong enough to deal with a whole lot of hardship to get to this stage.