If you need to secure a property quickly, or if you are doing renovations that can be completed within a year then you are better off using hard money or private lending options as they've got quicker close times and tend to be more investor friendly.

The private lender wants to be repaid in ~3 months.

Please provide useful advice on locating, assessing, and negotiating private money lending deals, especially from seasoned professionals.

Maybe I'm just not marketing it right. we are all private money .. i dont do anything other than that..

Just bear in mind he has a very specific private equity investing mind set.  

I want to buy a new private home and use my current primary residence equity (plus some cash) to buy a new primary house cash and then sell the old one.So, I am looking for a HELOC with little to no closing costs, as I will retain the money only for as long as I am selling my old house after buying a new one.Any advice?

I see this constantly out in the market place those who want to jump in the RE world that have limited to no resources and they are far to worried about what the equity or money partner is going to make.. or they spend months trolling the internet trying to find that private investor who is happy with 8% or 10% which they never find and they just lose the dream   ... if there is not enough money in a deal to split profit or be able to comfortably pay HML  then the deal is too skinny to start with..

Not so much, I think it is their self described "band of scrappy bankers and engineers" actually just trying to create a white label service where the QI has no liability and no effort to expend other than holding the money in some account doing heaven only knows what to make their profit.

Would you consider private lending?

I hav seen many private equity deals where the IRR is between 20% and 30%.I also don't like the way they are mixing all the different strategies.