There are a sizeable amount (spread out) of DIY "amateur real estate investors" who decided to do a "side business" of "house-flipping". Many of them start "young" and will get a few friends to help buy a distressed/foreclosed house, fix it up, then flip it to what often ends up being another "flipper" for some amount of profit.... And that new "owner" will in turn, make some "upscale improvements" and offer it up to what ends up being yet another "flipper" (at an even higher price for profit). Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
So for years, that house sits EMPTY with no one to live in it to help enhance a neighborhood, while these "flippers" treat these homes like fiat currency or basically, "money laundering"`. 
I remember almost 30 years ago in the neighborhood where I grew up, where there was a street not far from mine at the time, where something like 15 houses on that block (they were small twins/semi-detached), were all vacant and being flipped.
I even remember after Detroit pretty much collapsed, and countries like Saudi swooped in and bought up entire streets of abandoned homes to tear down and repurpose the land and/or try to build McMansions on larger lots.
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