  Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) have been extensively used as standardisable
candles in the optical for several decades. However, SNe Ia have shown to be
more homogeneous in the near-infrared (NIR), where the effect of dust
extinction is also attenuated. In this work, we explore the possibility of
using a low number of NIR observations for accurate distance estimations, given
the homogeneity at these wavelengths. We found that one epoch in $J$ and/or $H$
band, plus good $gr$-band coverage, gives an accurate estimation of peak
magnitudes in $J$ ($J_{max}$) and $H$ ($H_{max}$) bands. The use of a single
NIR epoch only introduces an additional scatter of $\sim0.05$ mag for epochs
around the time of $B$-band peak magnitude ($T_{max}$). We also tested the
effect of optical cadence and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) in the estimation of
$T_{max}$ and its uncertainty propagation to the NIR peak magnitudes. Both
cadence and S/N have a similar contribution, where we constrained the
introduced scatter of each to $<0.02$ mag in $J_{max}$ and $<0.01$ in
$H_{max}$. However, these effects are expected to be negligible, provided the
data quality is comparable to that obtained for observations of nearby SNe
($z\lesssim0.1$). The effect of S/N in the NIR was tested as well. For SNe Ia
at $0.08<z\lesssim0.1$, NIR observations with better S/N than that found in the
CSP sample is necessary to constrain the introduced scatter to a minimum
($\lesssim0.05$ mag). These results provide confidence for our FLOWS project
that aims in using SNe Ia with public ZTF optical light curves and few NIR
epochs to map out the peculiar velocity field of the local Universe. This will
allow us to determine the distribution of dark matter in our own supercluster,
Laniakea, and test the standard cosmological model by measuring the growth rate
of structures, parameterised by $fD$, and the Hubble-Lema\^itre constant,
$H_0$.
