Enjoy the process, and may your journey lead you to a rewarding and successful outcome!

My initial investment was directed toward the new Turks & Caicos location, but it's still in the developmental process.

I'm in the process of meeting and vetting two (for now) Cape Coral builders who might have the expertise and bandwidth to take over partially built projects like yours.

A process is far more important. 

Nothing new on the conversion process since an update 3 weeks ago, which didn’t say much.

But before this purchase I informed well, and I found a lot of useful information here: https://www.a1autotransport.com/auto-transport-financing/ related to shipping, how the whole process is going, etc.

The borrower's experience is important, but what's more important is the "Hard Asset," Hard money lenders rely on their due diligence process to determine the potential future value, review the renovation plans to get to that value & sometimes even the contractor.  

Should I be prioritizing finding a local expert, or are there tools and strategies I can use to handle this process myself?

Also remember just because a loan may qualify as being assumable the lender will go through a thorough underwriting process to confirm you meet eligibility for the loan.I have seen a guru teaching people with poor credit to go after these types of loans and it’s unfortunate as many would most likely not qualify.

You tied up 70k and a minimum of 6 months just to go through this process.