You also need the deal.

Also many lenders are getting out of the STR business because of potential for jurisdictions to ban them, and for those that allow it they are very keen on making sure proper permits are in place.Overall this seems like a tough deal to finance and might be better raising capital for the deal with more investors. 

By working together, we could take on bigger and better deals.

That being said, I can promise the amount of deals being done inside of our community is unmatched.

If you know what a property is worth when fully renovated, you'll have a good idea of whether the deal will make sense for an investor. 

A third friend of mine was looking on the web and saw some "deals" in Cape Coral. 

There are meet ups all over the country; i'd recommend a google search of your area to see what pops up. i'd also suggest joining local facebook groups for your area / surrounding areas and ask there.I tend to agree with Stuart here; your first deal should be your own capital here and serve as a proof of concept you can use as an example in moving forward to try and garner money from investors for future deals.Other than bringing a deal to an experienced investor it's unlikely they will want to give capital to someone who hasn't pulled the trigger before.

You can use Propstream.com, they have a good platform for finding off market deals

Or this equity can be used as collateralization for another deal.3. 

For my next deal I'm considering adding another duplex to the portfolio or investing in a syndication.