HELOC, Personal Loan, Hard Money?

[Melissa Kirchhoff]

Of HELOC, hard money, and personal loans, is there one that would be better than the other and why?

Here's my situation:

I've got some good equity in my home currently, but I would like to sell in around a year or so and downsize. Our interest is about 5.65% and we have a stupid loan I hate where you pay the interest of 30 years even if you pay off early. I wouldn't mind switching lenders for those reasons and having a line of credit open for projects. Current quotes I've gotten for just refi is about 3.8 and even with taking about 50k out, it leaves the mortgage payments about the same as they are currently it seems. So what's the catch or the drawback?

However, I see some hard money lenders say "no payments for X amount of months". First, is this true? If so, this would be very nice for a flip situation, to not have to worry about those extra payments. But what's the interest rate and all the nitty gritty with that? It was never something I'd considered before and I feel terribly ignorant about this type of financing.

Last, personal loans. My only real drawback is that 9-10% interest rate and the limit on how much I can draw (about 35k seems to be the max and those payments are like 1k a month! Yikes!) Is there a reason you'd choose this method? So far it seems the other ways would be better?

I'm looking into what would be best for a flip situation. I hope in the future I can build up and do buy and hold, STR, but right now, I feel like I'm in a situation where flips make the most sense for me. I don't want to argue those antics too much now but I wanted to give you a perspective on my current state and what I hope to move to because I know that will affect the answer, thanks!