my condolences on your recent lost.there are a few ways you can do this, as mentioned above you can take a heloc on your primary residence which will give you a second mortgage, first mortgage payment wont be impacted. you can do cash out refinance which will give you one mortgage and payment. it will pay the old mortgage and give you money in your pocket to pay for the rehab.or you can do a renovation refinance which is similar to cash out refinance but we would contractor involved  as part of the refinancing and they are paid through the loan

We try to save money by occasionally doing our own work, we only have a handful of properties.

You should fire them right away and talk to an attorney to prevent the loss, but I wouldn't expect much and it could be a waste since a company that does this will not have the money to do anything.When you have just one unit and you are looking for PM companies, your options are the bottom of the barrel because it's not a good use of the big one's time.

If not, ride out the 12 months with the hard money lender.People have to make good choices and not over extend themselves just for the sake of buying something they really can't afford or that doesn't make good cash flow.

On one hand the seller obviously wanted as much money as they could get.

You would actually be borrowing less money than originally but at a higher rate.   

I have a question and would really appreciate your input.I’ve done a couple of fix-and-flip projects in the past using hard money lenders, but I’ve noticed that their fees and interest rates significantly cut into my profits.

I'm going to reiterate what's already been mentioned above, but I'm going to actually give you examples of why it's relevant to you to find a U.S. tax professional.1 - You're going to need to file U.S. taxes once you have property down here, there's federal filings, state filings, and sometimes local filings too2 - Tons of tax treaties between the U.S. and Canada that are easy to miss and can cost you a lot of money (important one with rentals - effectively connected income - if the professional you talk to doesn't know what this is, run away)3 - The amount of days you spend in the U.S. needs to be tracked and if you go over a threshold, all of your worldwide income could be taxable by the U.S.4 - Selling real property means up to 15% of your sales proceeds might not be available to you for years (FIRPTA)5 - Lots of nuance at the state and local levels, which both want to take as much money from you as possibleMain takeaway here is that you should find a U.S. based tax person.

It’s online only but purpose built for business owners and they have automation for those applying the Profit First cash management system.

I also have money saved up for a down payment on another property.