I am looking into hard money loans but have no experience here with them and with 4 other loans in my portfolio, dont think I would qualify for a conventional loan due to my income/debt ratio.

Work on yourself and then take care of the debt. 

I may be worth running lean (as long as you have adequate reserves) for a year or so if there's room to grow rents by $50-100/unit/month.The real issue here is that you're paying full retail and using the HELOC as long-term debt.

My initial thoughts are to use the $30k to knock down the debt to $10k as the much higher interest I pay on the debt means I’m losing money each month, and start again saving from scratch.

Fix your credit and change your bad habbits before you take on another dime of debt.

Another tactic is to eliminate the deferred balance over a four-year period at 25% per year but only if the borrower maintains and on-time payment schedule.

We were looking at 2 potential properties and last week we eliminated 1 of them and put in an offer on the other. 

Hello folksI have a question about a payment claim I received through a law firm representing Hoa, Orlando, Florida , villa's costa del sol A payment that was allegedly not paid in time (actually paid to the management company that collects the funds for the hoa)At the same time, the hoa company was not updated that the payment was made and transferred a demand for collection by a law firm.I turned to the management company (everything is recorded in emails that the payment was made, etc.)I turned directly to hoaThey claim that they can not do anything because the matter is already handled by lawyers.And if I wanted to sue their management company.I turned to the lawyers (every call to them is subject to an astronomical fee, the management company that manages the properties for me,In fact, unknowingly, inflated the debt when they tried to find out what it was about and why the whole mess?

Also it may make more sense to break the debt into 2 loans so you can stay in the conforming loan limit space on the first mortgage.

I would also make sure all of my debt is long term.If what you're doing is working, why not keep doing it?