One thing to consider is that the housing shortage was not caused by short term rentals and they exacerbate only a tiny bit.

Leaving the existing financing in place.Many ways to skin a cat, but most of the times your GOOD or GREAT deals come after the property has been listed for a while.Continue to move forward and eventually you will arrive at your destination.SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS

Then take out the loan from the bank jointly (so your boots on the ground guy has some sort of skin in the game) secured against YOUR asset.

You need some skin in the game, take whatever cash and credit you have and leverage it to do Rental Arbitrage and rent a multi-family and then Air bnb it.

to make sure they have skin in the game...And what extra equity goes from you to them just to make sure they are compensated for their extra efforts of physically checking things and bringing value to the project? 

As soon as you start adding percentages you incentivize gross inequalities that will exacerbate over time and eventually result in full scale cultural divisions.

Does it appear they have any skin in the game or did they buy it for the cost of recording the deed? 

If you show that the purchase you made was a success and are willing to leave a little skin in the game then I don’t see why you couldn’t find a lender willing to forgo the seasoning period.

Yes, the sponsor team's experience is important but so are the assumptions in their underwriting.A good sponsor will have conservative assumptions (e.g. cap rate higher at exit).I also like to see the sponsors have skin in the game.

Craig's list and eBay over time DIY (who knows).....Upscale heavily decorated costs money.In many cases DIY can save about 50% in labor, but high end unique things will require workers with specialized (more costly) skills.To get the Look you want, the best way to accomplish a tied together "Feeling" is to get with an 'Interior Decorator" or Architect who does this style, and bounce the cost questions off of that person.There is no way to tell....is the animal skin bead spread $30 from a yard sale or $3,000 at Nordstrom's carpet department in Seattle?