Only the meals pencil, and the kitchen isn't a commercial kitchen

Small mill town, population under 4,000, two hours from anything. A former nurses' residence, 8 rooms, one shared bath per floor, big commercial-ish kitchen from the 1970s that has not been used for service in maybe twenty years. Asking 165k. It's the cheapest per door thing I've looked at all year and there's a reason.

Market room rent here is 425 to 475 all in. Eight rooms at 450 is 3,600 a month, 43,200 gross. Taxes 3,100, insurance is the ugly one at 4,800 quoted because of the room count and the shared cooking, heating oil is running 7,000 in a bad winter, water and sewer 2,400, and I'm carrying 6,000 for maintenance on a 1948 building. That's 23,300 before any management or vacancy or the roof I'll need in year six. Call it 19,900 net at full occupancy, which never happens.

The operator before last ran board with the room. Two meals a day, 675 a month instead of 450. Same eight rooms, that's 5,400 a month, 64,800 gross. Food cost plus one cook at part time hours is maybe 30k a year, so the meals add roughly 21,600 of gross and cost 30k. It loses money as a standalone. But it fills the house, because the demand around here is older single men on fixed incomes who can't or don't cook, and the three other places within an hour don't feed anyone.

So the question isn't whether the meals make money. It's whether the meals are the occupancy. And I can't tell from the outside.

What I actually don't know: serving food to residents almost certainly pulls in a food service license and a health inspection on that kitchen, and food service licensing and what counts as a boarding house meal exemption vary by state, so that's a question for someone licensed locally before I sign anything. The old hood has no suppression system that I can see. If bringing that kitchen to current code is 60k, the meals question is answered for me and I'm buying a 165k building with 20k of net at best.

I've asked the seller for the last three years of the previous operator's occupancy by month, not the tax returns, just the room counts. He says he'll look. I don't think he has them.

Right now I'm sitting on it. If nobody can tell me what the kitchen costs to reopen, I don't know how to price the only thing that makes the building work.