Best Way to Finance Acquisition of Short Term Rental??

[DeWitt Gibson]

Hi Bigger Pockets: 

I see that this subject has been covered before in older posts but I thought I'd start a fresh post to get the best current thinking with AirBnb, VRBO, etc becoming more mainstream.

What is the most effective strategy to debt finance the acquisition of a property that you plan to rent out exclusively as a short term vacation property?

The way I see it currently, the options seem to be:

1) Use cash to buy the property outright and then borrow against it after closing.

2) Get a investor loan with terms of a few months to few years with 15-20% down and a balloon payment. Refinance it to a long term loan before the balloon comes due.

3) Convince a conventional lender that the property qualifies as an "investment property" or "vacation property" and get a long term loan with 20-30% down and full recourse.

4) Non-Recourse Loans with 50% max LTV.

There must be better or other debt options out there besides these, or are there? 

How are you all going about financing the acquisition of these short term rentals? If I wanted to buy as many vacation rental properties with as little down payment required as possible per property, how would I go about that?

Thanks!