Once NJ takes their share of the taxes, there's not much left to pay for the debt service and likely upkeep.

Instead of your business putting all of the profits back into itself, it needs to start paying you for your time, which in turn goes into the household to take some of the weight off of her. 

If it was driving for dollars and the house looked in disrepair, you can follow up with questions about the upkeep and what things is he aware of that would need to be replaced or updated if he were going to put the house on the market.Financing at 30% interest with a 50k prepayment penalty is his way of saying no. 

But you make them pay according to the scale of their stupidity and the real cost to repair the damage, not according to your inability to manage a property and ignorance of the upkeep and repair of basic building materials.

I wouldn't have to pay the sign upkeep, the insurance, or find the renters - the billboard company does all that.

So like all these markets  LOCATION is paramount you simply cant buy based on return numbers or price points.. the take away here is buy the best you can not the houses that look best on paper.. a 5 or 6% return that you actually get on these rentals over time without major issues with tenants needs to be weighted with the " My Criteria says I need to make 9 to 12% return) which turns out many times like what your describing above basically no return or negative returns with little hope to right the ship for many years to come. 

Large format tile is around $2-3/sq foot in my area, make sure you get the LFT mortar if doing the walls, and do your installer a favor and get the lightest weight tile you can- 6x24 planks may be better than 12x24 for installation.

A good mentor is worth their weight in gold. 

I think they should weight out both options. 

How you weight those factors will likely yield your choice.