However, it’s parked in assets that will be hard to buy back again and can be passed on to your children.

Buy the $160K FIRST as an owner occupied and obtain an FHA loan, putting 5% down ($8,000). 

It also may be more likely to happen with a multi since additional income would be obtainable.  

There are some asset-based lenders that do not keep this rule, but they have lower LTV ratios and require a greater percent down.Hope this helps.

Had we been beholden to hard money and not had enough assets to complete the project, a small loss that we took might have ended up as a very large loss.IF you can do it, I absolutely would start out with cash reserves and/or low cost lines of credit instead of using hard money lending.  

My lender is offering 7.85% for investment property.SEEKING ADVICE; what would BP members advise if they owned such an asset?  

Just disclose to them you are primarily interested in using your license for your own acquisitions and sales of personal assets.

If that's at all possible in your case then I would definitely lean more towards buying an asset.

Anything is obtainable if you try hard enough.

@Scott Smith he specializes in RE asset protection.