San Fran Real Estate Strategy - FHA loans & mortgage insurance?

[Siobhain Dobrovolny]

Hi, lovely Bigger Pockets colleagues,

Alas, I have found you!  A mixed group of successful professionals, eager lifelong learners, and kind souls equally as jazzed about Real Estate and financial independence as I am.  This is my first post here and I'm so happy to be here!  I need to create a new strategy for my new life in my new city of San Francisco and am so happy to have you all here to help build my knowledge, confidence, and courage. 

My current tentative strategy is to focus on house hacking in San Francisco.  I'm not interested in eating as much dust as I did in my 20's at the moment...  I might be willing to live in a living room behind a curtain to make the numbers work but that's about the level of my "discomfort pendulum" at the moment. 

My thought is to buy a turnkey property in or around the bay area (in SF if I can make the numbers work) and live in it for a year. I'm analyzing 1 deal/day per Brandon Turners' advice and it's a wonderful education. I keep hearing about this FHA loan option with only 3.5% money down for owner-occupied investments so that sounds awesome! I've never used one to finance a property before. I noticed that when I change my down payment within Zillow to 3.5% they want to add in mortgage insurance. One question I have is if I go for an FHA loan, what should I budget in for mortgage insurance? Also, is the Zillow calculator a useful tool? Any other advice is welcome.

Thanking you in advance!

Best, Siobhain