Multifamily Lenders and House Hacking

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Hi Everyone,

It's been about a year and I am still looking for my first deal. About two weeks ago I thought I found the deal that I have been waiting for only to find out I wasn't doing my math right! This week however, I think I found a property worth looking at, but I have 2 questions:

1) This property is a 4 unit and I plan to house hack using an FHA loan. I reached out to the broker and he put me in contact with his lender. When I spoke to the lender on the phone, he told me something that I had not heard about before. He said 3-4 unit properties are difficult to get an FHA loan approved because FHA requires the rents of the other units to be able to cover the mortgage alone. He said he had never seen one pencil out. I was wondering if this was true? I have done a lot of research on 3-4 unit properties because that is how I plan on starting out and I have not heard of this before. In addition, this property that I am looking at does pencil out where the other 3 units can pay for the mortgage alone (not including utilities, cap ex, repairs, etc.). I was wondering if the lender was trying to discourage me from going this route or if this was really true. Any thoughts?

2) I am located in Orange County, California and it is an expensive market. Like I mentioned above, I want to house hack to get started but I think it is unrealistic for me to expect to live for free in this market (every deal I have analyzed doesn't work out that way). I pay $1630 a month plus utilities. My strategy is to house hack and if I could pay about $400 less in rent and all other expenses (with cap ex, vacancy and repairs included) then I consider it a good deal. Is that a good strategy in this market?

Thanks in advance!