I just have no idea how the contracts work, financing options outside traditional, etc. would love some help.

I do not recall any other fees or charges outside of traditional closing costs and they were easy to work with and communicated very well. 

If you’re close to $150,000 in AGI, a few ways you can bring that down AGI is by maxing out a 401k traditional ($23k for 2024 tax year), maxing out your HSA ($4,150 for 2024 tax year), and if you have any capital losses from stocks (up to $3k per year), I would encourage you to have great bookkeeping to ensure you’re capturing all of your deductions appropriately on your rental property.

It felt like a no-brainer for the value of the land, but being able to utilize a traditional mortgage because there was a clean yet simple 3 bed 2 bath house on the lot made the deal even sweeter!

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

If the plan is to live in the property, a traditional hard money bridge loan will not work.

Underwriting will assess the performance and appraisal of the property based on traditional long-term rental comps.

But if you look into their marketing, socials, Youtube, IG, past sales record on Zillow and stuff you can see if they really are in the investment space or if they work with traditional homeowners.

Once you do this conversion it will be difficult to change it back to a traditional long-term rental. 

Just be mindful the reverse exchanges tend to be more expensive than a traditional 1031 exchange.