I believe the hard part is to get approval by the town for the works.

I will get it under contract with investor/credit approval contingencies, today.  

Gat a DU report from your lender, this shows your preapproval was fully underwritten and not just some 5 minute half a$$ approval. 

Hello all, I am currently in the pre-approval process for a multi-family unit (house hack) in Cleveland.

Let's says you are approved for a loan with a 75% max ltv but you only want to put a down payment of 10%, you could ask the seller to carry the balance.

Take over the payments, no new debt or cash from you, you offer some equity at closing. 

Hello all, I am currently in the pre-approval process for a multi-family unit (house hack) in Cleveland.

Generally lenders want to see the anticipated rental income covers the mortgage but in many cases you can get approved even if the anticipated rental income is less than the mortgage. 

If the foreign guarantor is willing to put up the US based assets in guarantee, the lender may approve to move forward.

The home had a conventional offer submitted the day we saw it and my realtor, convinced this was the best home on the market for the purposes of getting the FHA loan approved, proposed a strategy that involved an above-asking offer to ensure we had an accepted offer.