You can do everything you need to do on an old laptop… you don’t need a desktop. You just need to make sure you disable any of the power saving settings so it can stay on all the time but then enable a display-off type of screen saver.

If demolition is even an option, the house itself is likely in bad shape and not livable

Not necessarily. I don’t know if this is the case here but some places, people view the property location as more valuable and have too much money so they buy the house/property and then knock the house down and build what they want no matter the condition of the original house.

This happened to someone I know, their house needed a little work but was perfectly fine. The new owner didn’t even go inside to look at the house. Made an offer and then tore it down to build something new.