Remember that the question was prefaced with this information:
"home has been destroyed by a fire and has since remained in the same blighted condition for 2 years or more"

So, attempting to buy that home will be hard and misguided. What is the likliehood that property taxes have been paid since it burned and even before it burned. Very likely that the property has been remanded to the County since it is two years unoccupied. To get the title you have to pay the back taxes [[or somebody does) and you may have a water lein that has to be taken care of. Say you're up to $4000 there. Then the poster mentions that its a tear-down. There are licenses and fees there and you have to use a certified company because of demolition and dumping laws. That will be $2000 right there.

Bottom line: "finding the owner' and "buying" the property from him/her for $1000 or less is unrealistic and with additional fees, costs, demolition, etc - it is not sensible at all to try to "buy" a derelect property.

As to how to go about finding any owner: go to Wayne County's site and then go to "pay your taxes." The page will ask for the address of the parcel and when you put that in you can learn who/what the owner is [[if not a commercial property). Then go to Wayne County Land Records [[a different website), search for the name you just got and by searching the parcel ownership information you can oftern determine the owner's address.

Be warned: many properties are so tax delinquent that the records just say forfeited and there is no further information.

As for Blight Busters - they have a great model - but they don't really work on the east side, for instance and they aren't working on the SW side - so unless the poster's problem property is in their area of concern, they won't want it.