Where do you find "local" hard money lenders?

@Geoff Engel If you don't want to be a landlord but still want to be involved with investing you could be a private money lender for flips or in partnerships and bring the money to the deal.

We're in the business to make money right?

But even to this day the money is always the winner not me.. thats how you raise significant capital ..

Traditional bank loans can be slow and have strict requirements, while hard money and private lending seem to offer more flexibility.For those who’ve secured funding before, what’s been your experience?

They would be putting in some money and their service as sweat equity, and we would be putting up money and my wife’s services. 

That’s great advice Taz, I’m currently working on saving enough money to get started, house hacking is hard for me at the moment because I just bought a house 2 years ago, I would have to sell my house(which is in a great neighborhood great location) and use that money to fund the duplex which isn’t totally out of the question, I would like to keep the house if possible but also would like to get real estate investing more.

I do not have the capital for the property to pitch in, so I plan to use the investors money to secure the property.The interest rate that I will pay the investor is 5% for up to a duration of 20 years.

Value your money more. 

Quote from @Paul Whitehurst: Many will tell you to borrow money from Property A to purchase Property B, but that's known as over-leveraging and not recommended for a newer investor.