How to pick a hard money lender?

[CK Hwang]

Over the last year, my fix and flip business has grown gradually and it looks like to grow further I'm kicking around the idea of trying to use some hard money to fund more projects and to get used to working with hard money. I was planning to use hard money very conservatively for now, maybe for a start only funding 10% of the project. As such, I did have a few questions I was hoping fellow BP members with hard money experience could answer.  

1. How does one go about picking a hard money lender to work with? Aside from terms and interests rates, is there anything else to look out for?

2. Does hard money work better for properties of certain price points than others? or certain types of properties etc? especially if one was borrowing up to say 70% of LTV? My rough calculation gave me a feeling that HML loans in my specific market was a solution up to about $250K, beyond that, the interests rates as an absolute amount was so high it starts eating up the profits. Anyone has thoughts on this?

3. When using hard money, besides keeping a reserve aside to service the loan, is there techniques one can do to make sure hard money is used safely as a tool?

Thanks in in advance.