My 2 pieces of advice are: 1.call Proper insurance, they specialize in short term rental insurance, 2.

Pick up the pieces and find out what you lack and get back to it....!

Last piece of advice is to avoid shortcuts on the development phase in an effort to make up for the added carrying costs.  

There are a lot of moving pieces with that strategy, so having someone who understands how to properly track expenses, capital improvements, and refinances is key.

Offer the design team a piece of the equity OR pay a premium as incentive to keep to an established timeline (that is within their control). 

I would look up Michael Blank's content on YouTube.

Is it fair to ask the tenant to cover a piece?

If, however, you look at real estate as fixed income, that's okay.If I could only give you one piece of advice, it would be to buy the property you want to own the most 10 years from now.

For example I have some units in VT that are a 1.5% rule and am looking to move but have not had a  lot of bites and units sell for around $75k a piece 

This gets your yellow letters down to .309 per piece, standard mail.