A bank will only loan you about 75% of the equity.

if your doing a senior project I would suspect your best and most cost effective landing solution is going to be a local community bank that loves real estate.. in my experience most will want 50% down on the dirt and a ton of experience and a really strong balance sheet.Myself I always pay cash for the dirt this makes finding a lending partner much easier.

I bank with Navy Federal Credit Union, and they have a great 20 year interest only HELOC option in which I could utilize my substantial home equity.

Should I check into local smaller banks here or Credit Unions? 

I personally would never borrow money from a bank or private investor if there was any chance of losing it. 

STRs are difficult for a traditional LTR PMC to properly manage!

But now I'm getting check from the title company and have to put that in the bank. 

I have enough cash in the bank to purchase a small  2bd, 1ba SFR (already cash flowing/w tenant) outright.

i am a reo broker here in south florida and work with many current asset managers and several banks. we sell many reo properties. some of those lists floating around out there are dead end streets as so many bomb bard the asset managers with requests they dont even reply 1

I tried to get a HELOC on my rental property, but the bank denied me for a low loan-to-value on the property.