What do most people do in this situation?

If not, get referrals for a lender from people whose judgment you trust.

I have connected with an RE-focused agent who is sending me properties to research, but I'm not sure if he is the right fit yet.

You likely won't get Short term but some people use a mix of airbnb and furnished finder. 

If you don't have any leads or don't know where to start here are a couple suggestions: ask brokers who people use for debt, find a mortgage broker as they have access to different buckets of capital, use a website like CoStar to look at closed transaction over the last 12 months and see who they used for debt.

They find and fix the deals and we sign the checks.The idea was amazing for people whose time is completely eaten up by our employers, looking for a way to create retirement with rental income.However, that is not at all what he did.In reality, he found the crappiest oldest homes ( more like death traps), that no other knowledgeable investor would touch, and upsold them to us for $20-50K more than they were worth, lied about the numbers, and charged us for repairs he never did.

Feel free to shoot me a DM if you would like to connect, I am always eager to help newer investors build their portfolio.

The people who are selling are interested in being a part of a JV on the development, and my friend found someone who is interested in the property.

Off Market through connections How did you finance this deal?

We have an acquisition team that finds properties for you;we connect you with vetted team on the ground like property manager, contractors; we also connect you with HML.