You want to stay liquid, although 7.25% rate is higher than i'd like to carry, but with the way things are going right now.

@Adielle Rivera You should be fine to carry out that situation you mentioned. 

Then, once you have carried that for a certain time period other 'regular' insurers will take you back.  

We require tenants to carry renters insurance as well. 

In addition to appreciation potential, there are a bunch of tax benefits to consider as well... my favorite being that a tax loss can be carried forward to offset future taxable income.

I’ll probably take a bit of a tax hit in order to 1031 without carrying the mortgage across.

So your carrying costs can be quite large.  

For example, seller may have 4.5% debt and so current NOI is worth more to seller than a new buyer who has to pay 6.5% debt.Seller finance is a great tool too.My only caution is to NOT overpay for a property in exchange for seller finance at an attractive rate.Here is a hypothetical say market cap is 7.0%.New conventional debt is 6.5%.But seller will carry at 5%.With seller finance at 5%: What price does one pay?

The owners may agree to carry part of the financing, but you won't need them to stick around to transition operations.After acquiring the properties and assets you wish, you would either run your own business, or part-out and resell some of the assets.From your post, it does not sound like parting out the properties is a viable path and where you admit to having no experience with vacation rentals or the resort business, you might want to explore purchasing the business with the current owners hanging around for a bit to help you get your feet wet.Regardless of approach, it needs to have legs to be worth pursuing.

One tool I've utilized extensively for personal and client acquisitions are seller carried transactions.