Here are the variables that need to come to a lender to get qualified for loan:ExperienceCreditCash (probably 25% down + closing costs + reserves)Net worth (usually 1:1 with exceptions for lots of experience)If you don't have ALL of these, then you need a partner that will fill in the rest of the gaps.FYI, for commercial type loans in the private space, your income is almost entirely irreverent. 

Ill be moving in three years to either Hawaii or Colorado - and I would love to find a way to manage them all without having to spend ~$900/mo between my 3 properties.

And here's the kicker: I am having to spend far more to fix the house up to sell than I made from renting it out for 6 years.

And, document any and all property preservation money you spend. 

What I do is offfer my angry tennants the opportunity to get into real estate investing, offer them work in maintaining properties, collecting rents, and offer guidance on them being able to buy their first place of their own.Don't you think they would love to have at minimum two jobs to be able to save up the money , work their ends off to build up their credit, hunt down deals, and negotiate a purchase, invest their money knowing there is no guarantee of ever getting your money out of it or of profiting, have to spend thousands of dollars or 10's of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to be a ble to provide others with housing?

Let's hop into a private message thread so I can get a little more detailed info so I can advise correctly.

Three months later our tenant didn't pay rent and we had to start an eviction which ended up in her abandoning the property and us spending $8,000 in a cleanup/rehab of the property.

I will try to answer you as honest as I can.....What you are talking about is an private investor not Hard Money Loan. 

I would love to meet some private and / or hard money lenders in the Lake Norman, NC area.

Thanks everyone who replyed to this post - mostly privately of course.