New investors can go at there own pace, build relationships, and get better deals on materials and labor. 

Alternatively, this can be sent to collections (creditor transferring the responsibility of collecting debt to a third-party agency). 

Agreed with @Theresa HarrisGet a contractor recommendation (or multiple) from your friend and reach out to GCs yourself to have a couple of quotes and ideas for the renovation project.During the walkthroughs, you can pick the contractor's brain regarding pricing on different material grades, efficient layout ideas, etc.

I noticed on Zillow that asbestos was listed as a building material, but I didn't pay attention to it until my insurance agent mentioned it.

That would be a very good alternative to multifamily. 

Anyone else invested with their Fidelity IRA into an alternative investment recently that I can look into the fund to see if it might be right for myself?

I requested copies of the income taxes for them both and it looks like this could be a pretty good deal but I'm not sure how much he spends on materials to keep them running as that was not included in his "financial report" (which was a piece of paper with number written for utilities).

Alternatively, they can sign a new lease and save a lot of money.

You can also do other alternative investments such as, private lending, private placements and many other things.

But over a long enough investing period the numbers should more or less balance themselves out and become fairly reliable.As Bruce pointed out, the alternative is to buy and remodel a piece of crap house.