Anyone who has ever looked with wonderment and maybe even a little envy at fancy real estate ads for homes outside their price range is familiar with the sales pitch.

The house has stupendous views (of the mountains, lake, sunsets or sunrises); luxurious amenities (solid wood cabinets, no particle board); great neighborhood shopping (think Trader Joe’s); trendy restaurants; new appliances, flooring and fixtures; a padded play room for the kids and a landscaped patio with a wet bar for adults.

A good place for families to settle and share with their neighbors.

Same for commercial property. Every building is a winner, with income potential in a high-traffic neighborhood, central to everything and ready to generate solid profits for a new owner.

There are medical campuses, tech labs, office parks — all looking to attract commercial tenants of shared needs and interests.

It’s part of the sales job. Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

It was a great song 80 years ago and seems the anthem for real estate promotion, particularly in big cities.

It’s just good business to sell property with an eye toward putting people in the right neighborhood for their needs.

At least I thought so, until a recent real estate ad in The Wall Street Journal for a commercial building in Chicago caught my attention. It didn’t promote anything fancy; it didn’t try to wow readers with descriptions dripping in positive adjectives.

The agent is trying to sell a vacant 12,000-square-foot, three-story dumpy-looking building on the less glamorous edge of downtown. The ad is honest: The building is vacant and “in need of updating.” The pitch is clear: “Plan for long-term redevelopment down the road.”

That’d better be a really nice road. The suggested opening bid is $3.775 million.

But what’s really interesting is the pitch for who might what to buy or use the property. Among the list of possible occupants the agent thinks may be the target audience were personal injury law firms (years ago, derisively called ambulance chasers) and, get this, foreign consulate offices.

What the two have in common escapes me, other than they both wear nice suits.

Now I know the U.S. is not the best of buddies these days with a lot of countries, but has it gotten so bad that real estate sellers are lumping foreign consulates in the same category of tenants as personal injury lawyers.

Might as well add bail bondsmen to the tenant list.

Maybe it’s just me — my mind wants everything to be logical and fit together — but why would the same property be attractive for personal injury lawyers and also consul generals and other foreign officials trying to help their citizens and business navigate the laws of the United States.

They have nothing in common. Unless a foreign citizen gets hit by a car and visits the consulate to seek help and advice and sees the neon sign across the hall that flashes: “Got hurt? Don’t just get better, get even!”

Granted, I don’t know anything about selling commercial property, other than I can’t afford it. But lumping foreign officials and personal injury lawyers together as if they are some kind of kindred spirits meant to share a front door and a lobby makes about as much sense as anything else in the world these days.

Or maybe this isn’t such an odd couple, and I am the odd one standing at the property.