I know the development process and have good contacts on the civil engineering, site work and GC side. 

Property taxes with the exception of no income tax states tend to be way, way higher in cold belt states.For development the entitlement process tends to be longer in cold belt states.

So I am trying to learn or understand the actual process buying from a wholesaler.

Is it a similar process to probate?

So the steps I recommend to do this would be to talk to a few lenders first, get an idea of what their process is and see who you enjoy working with, look for your investment properties, and get back to the lenders so they can appraise and approve/disapprove the loan.

More than anything I want to get the house rented so I can get into a new place and start the process over again always saving for the next 5% down payment. 

Agency loan processing at 5.5% fixed interest rate.

Otherwise the process is the same.

Background is she’s about 4 months behind in total rent, original lease ended in December, now going month to month because I didn’t want to put her out as she’s a single mother with 3 kids (also didn’t have the bandwidth to go through the eviction process because this property is in another city)I hired a property manager to help and we’ve recouped a bit of money but she’s still about 6500 owed.

I'm very early in the process, I would even consider it simply the learning process.