Ideally you’d arrange with the friend that he would get all his money back plus interest at closing of the sale as opposed to monthly interest payments.The other option is equity, where he would split profits.

Brewsome seems like an ideal place to have them haha

We'd be looking for a smaller cottage, preferably not too far from a large body of water, ideally sub $200k.  

This behavior is ideal for scammers!

In retrospect I wonder what he would have charged me for that custom "appraisal"?

@Jinesh Kumar I have been a Farmer's customer for 25 years.

One of the things I have started doing is looking for the types of chain restaurants that my ideal tenant will want to frequent as they will have already done the market research for me.

I would sell the house and not rent it out. 1031 ideally into multi unit(s) that cash flow well and rent a personal residence in the meantime. 1031 is the key here since you are sitting on a massive gain on sale.

It might not be ideal for you to leave them in place until the moratorium is listed, but it seems like the best option at the moment. 

Ideally, I would love to BRRRR a property, but am worried about finding hard money to initially make an all-cash offer on a place.