Flipping-lite? Strategy help for very light cosmetic fixers

[Jenna Y.]

Hello - We are currently working on two home renovations, which we’ll be holding. Nearly every week we bump into someone new that is impressed with what we’re doing design-wise and looking to buy a property like ours for themselves as a weekend/vacation home.

We’ve discovered quite a few other off-market prospective properties in the area with that kind of potential.

In order for them to be appealing to this specific market (city dwellers, deeper pockets, a specific design aesthetic), we could put in about $1k in cosmetic design-related improvements and about a week of work.

We're trying to connect the dots. 

Are there alternatives to the traditional flipping route? Flipping seems like not the best fit because: 

• Would like to avoid needing to put all cash down.
• Doing two closings, with the associated paperwork and costs (and taxes!) seems a bit overkill for something like this - we want to get in and out quickly - $1k in improvements, one week of time.

Unless I’m mistaken, wholesaling seems to be more of an investor-to-investor transaction. Moreover, the value we’re trying to capture here is two-fold (a) finding under-market properties (b) our unique ability to spruce things up, design-wise, so it appeals to a specific target market.

Is there anything between flipping and wholesaling? Flipping-lite? Suggestions on how you'd approach?

[Account Closed]

@Jenna Y.  How about "Interior Designer" or "Realtor"?  In your plan, how would you make money if you only improve the property by $1,000.00?