My long-term goal and ultimate desire is to become financially independent, however, short-term I want to get myself and my family out of debit and be able to comfortably take care of our bills.

If you have a chance to get out of it with $30K cash, I'm very comfortable with the decision to take the cash.

A local strip mall does not typically attract the kind of investor who will be comfortable with a ground lease situation or a DCF calculation.

Go around with him/her and choose a property(s) that you are comfortable with.

Regardless of that I felt more comfortable with the construction company business.  

The property just closed in September.Mortgage, taxes, insurance, and PMI come to $2,800 per month, rents from the three units I don’t live in are $2,705 and due for an increase, and plus I rent out a room in my unit for $650/month (granted you probably wouldn’t be comfortable doing this with a family) for a total of $3,355 rents per month.

Additionally I love to provide editorials regarding architecture, design, and markets.

That's just driving the neighborhoods watching for houses which look empty or unkept.The reason one might consult a tax attorney / CPA is to design your business entity structure.

But it depends on your experience and comfort level if you want to leverage yourself more or less.

Have you you determined any kind of personal guidelines, such as loan limits or total loans out that you are comfortable with?