Fund that flip is smaller, but also less investors, so at least the deals are not funded in just a few seconds.Both platforms suffer from some of the problems that pretty much all of the hard money loan platforms do: not enough volume for someone wanting to maintain a large portfolio, not enough conservative 65% LTV loans, too may loans and judicial only states (where it's extremely expensive and time-consuming if you need to foreclose which can cause losses), and single note risk (i.e not diversified).

We knew we were being conservative with revenues but thought we were being conservative with the expenses.

If I were in your shoes, I would be conservative as possible and go for the worst case scenario.

ITs going to depend on a lot of factors but just jumping into STR "around the country" (i.e. potentially very far from yourself) is going to be challenging - property management fees are going to eat up a lot and its hard to cash flow as it is with current rates/prices.Most people would start with LTRs as its generally good for the "first investment" to be more of a learning experience and chalking up a lot of mistakes - so keeping $ amounts low, leverage conservative and the investment as "vanilla" as possible is generally good advice

Are you trying to invest conservatively or make a riskier investment for higher gains?

What's funny is my parents kinda sold me on this deal when I wanted my 1st purchase to be much smaller and more conservative. 

@Dayton BourassaI would also be very cautious of thinking you can increase the current rent by 35%, I know you passed on this deal, but when analyzing deals it's important to be conservative when estimating rental income, if you are not conservative with your estimates then you need to account for more vacancy, which is essentially doing the same thing as being conservative. 

Six months reserves should be more than sufficient to qualify and conservative to account for any (eventual) unforeseen circumstances. 

Mind you, I'm a conservative but when they ushered in the covid con, I got out of the political realm. 

One potential way to get super conservative is to take the least valuable income stream and multiply the NOI by comps for that income stream.