Different states have different redemption periods where the prior owner could contest the tax sale and it gets hairy.  

If my partner wasn’t so risk adverse and opposed to moving I would buy a new property and house hack it every 14 months or so when the seasoning period on the previous 3.5% down payment loan was up.

More standard income variations are: asset depletion (using reserve distributions as the proposed income) or average personal or business bank statement deposits over a 12-24-36 month period. 

I could only utilize specific contractors to do the work & had to have inspections periodically. 

Set the expectations during the honeymoon period. 

However, lenders typically need to see that debt payments have been made by the other party for a certain period of time to remove it from the DTI (12 months usually).

Since the likelihood of default is lowered with a condensed timeline (and most borrowers will refinance before the adjustment period) the interest rates on ARM's can be .5-1.5% lower than typical 30 year fixed mortgage options. - Interest only.

When you say you must have "future appreciation" how much appreciation are you looking for and over what period of time? 

Heating oil is expensive and I only expect a 3 year period before I see a significant return on my outlay.

The 0% interest period was generally 12 - 18 months.