Thanks!
I was wracking my brain to come up with a way to use the property cards effectively, but everything I tried felt like it was better used as part of a different system. Originally I had them be the assets, or blockers, or "boosters" which kind-of acted like the opposite of blockers. All of them felt awkward and unwieldy.
I thought about letting players move backwards, but I wanted to encourage the feeling that they are running out of time. You have to get to the end as fast as possible, and it's a race against the building threat clock. When the game feels like that, there is no incentive for moving backwards.
I'm definitely interested in reading this blog of yours, you should send me a link when you get it up!