Any advice on how to make this process as stress-free as possible, would be greatly appreciated!

Are there any hard money lenders or alternative solutions that could help navigate this dilemma?

Nothing is the top niche because it's highly dependent on what you are interested in, who you know in that class, what your goals are, and how much money you have to invest in your education and/or assets.In general, no one new to investing should start with mobile home parks just from an operations and capital standpoint.

It is holding me back from proceeding because of lack of money to lock in contracts.

This is the part of the tax law that controls whether the money we spent on fixing something on our property is treated as an expense or as a capital improvement.The Regulations I mentioned are extremely complex and confusing. 

A few interesting things but one in particular:3.7.1 To purchase a Subscription Listing, Host must make an order by means of the Site's online order form and pay Vrbo the fees for the relevant Listing, which may or may not be accepted by Vrbo ("Subscription Listing Fees").

For financing, we were able to just do a 1031 exchange from a duplex we sold and make up the difference in cash.

Everyone loves saving money until they realize that they were cutting corners and being cheap.

Quote from @Piper Pepperidge: Looking to do my first flip, was originally looking at baltimore, but it looks like it's moving towards a buyer's market and inventory is very high so I'm looking for other hot neighbors with low inventory.ThanksHottest markets are inner ring dc suburbs, moco, nova, even Howard and Frederick, I can tell though if you are a 1st time flipper you will lose money, I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade and I cannot hit my numbers, I met with a flipper a few weeks doing 12 a month, has his own crews, buys off market, literally a full time business, even he is struggling , it’s a bad time to flip right now tbh. 

I would not think of it as "getting money back".