I’ve actually seen that before. Never understood it and always wondered if they found a sucker to buy the properties.
Well, they say a sucker is born every minute.
It's very common. It's called a Life Estate. Most often, it is used when passing a property to one's children before your passing, so that it isn't a major problem during probate.
When it isn't passed to family, it is a good way to get ownership of an asset, often at a very favorable price... as long as you don't mind waiting a while to make it fully yours. Corporations taking the long view are an obvious entity to be interested in this kind of purchase.