Yes, you may lose some established snow birds by changing terms and prices, but if you are losing money you are better off without them.

I am also an investor that does flips, has rentals, lend my own money, has owned STR and have been a member of the local REIA for over 10 years, So hopefully my experience and network of other investors could prove useful in evaluating the potential of the property and possibly attract a partner if you need. 

I am currently in a very high interest hard money mortgage that balloons in September 2025.

Take your time, spend the money, invest your time and energy into actually coming to the market, sitting down with these brokers, property managers, other investors, go to networking meets, get in the market, get face to face, belly to belly with the brokers. , trust me, if you fly the way all the way from California to Raleigh, North Carolina, , the broker in Raleigh is probably going to consider you a serious buyer since you just spent, you know, a couple thousand bucks and, you know, three, four days to get there.

I am trying to raise money from Friends and Family for putting together the down payment needs.

The short term and balloon payments that seem to come with hard money are pretty intimidating.

Please be careful, at higher amounts leveraged, the carrying costs/time value of money can eat you alive if you have any hiccups in your project. 

These teams have clear underwriting showing them how much money they will make on a deal.

The units don't appreciate like normal real estate and resale can be difficult, and you will be hard pressed to make money renting out the unit.

I would advise to use a short term hard money loan, acquire it quickly, rehab it, and refinance into a long term DSCR loan.