Now, we do live in a small town, touristy area that does lack in nicer/unique short-term rentals. 

As a true wholesaler, how do you bring value to the table if you didn't perform these tasks and how did you ever come up with your offer price if you didn't do this!!

I don't have any answers for you Holli but I'm commenting so I get notifications when others reply to this as it sounds like a unique project and I'd love to hear more!

This is known as “speculating,” and it isn’t much better than getting in your car, driving to Vegas, and betting all your money at the poker table.

Know of an efficient way to identify hard money lenders that will solely focus on an 80K loan against a property purchased at $256K with me bringing the rest of money to the closing table?

I truly have a unique situation as one of my mentors mentioned so I am trying to see what the best decision to do with what I have is.

That is, unless investors are now willing to pay more than the 1% rule used to dictate.I know it will cost some time and money to get them vacant and fixed up, but the alternative seems to be to leave 10s of thousands of dollars on the table.

What are you bringing to the table. 

My business partner and I focus solely on making properties unique.

I'm in contract on kind of a unique property.