Long story short, any owner-occupied property loan will require the borrower to show income that the lender can determine to be stable and predictable in their good-faith effort to confirm the ability to repay. 

Quote from @Zach Howard: Quote from @Jonathan Greene: If you are looking at properties in the US only on Zillow, and not seeing them in person (I know you are in Hong Kong), this is just an effort in futility because you can't underwrite single-family or small multifamily deals only online.

What is a "wholesaler" at simplest terms?

A 4-plex would be ideal and you could play around with doing 1 long-term, 1 mid-term, and 1 short-term, plus you, if it works on your area to upgrade your income.

Our combined efforts made the property appealing to buyers, leading to a successful sale at $99,000.

Money for the down payments that comes in like an annuity either from your W2 efforts or from owning another business.

I will gladly assign you some remedial tasks associated with my projects and for your efforts and generosity I will assign you Co-GP title and send you out into the world to misrepresent your capabilities and track record to raise capital from others.

Do you believe in it’s mid to long term growth potential?

Even still, it could be said that I've still lost money due to my time on the tools instead of prospecting as a real estate agent (the cost of lost opportunity).If you can truly do 80%-90% of the work yourself (at acceptable quality levels) and you aren't sacrificing your time where you can get better returns for your efforts, then yes, it can work even up here in Canada.

Even a LOI is not strong enough to start spending time, effort and MONEY on due diligence.