Buying a principal residence while renting a personal apartment

[Adam Farmelo]

Hi all,

My girlfriend and I recently moved to a new area, (Elmira, NY) and at the time when we moved we figured that it would be better for us to rent an apartment rather than buy a house. So we signed a 1 year lease and now we're 3 months in and discovered REI and house hacking.

We're very interested and able to buy a MFH with some good financing options, but it would require us to buy as a "principal residence". Now, we're not lawyers, but we're aware that there exist certain terms on the loans for principal residences. We want to pursue this option and buy a property as an investment but also as our primary residence so we can house hack when we move out of our apartment at the end of our lease.

The problem that we're seeing is that we wont be living in this residence for at least 7 months (if we stay in our current apartment), assuming two months to find and close on a property. Can we proceed with this idea and buy a property as our principal residence but not move in for half a year? We do fully intend to move in, and we're not trying to cheat anyone here or pull anything shady. We've spoken with a lender who mentioned that they don't technically follow up or check that the owner is actually living on the premises, but in my eyes this seems like a precarious situation for us.

We want to take advantage of the low down payment options because we're new grads and don't have enough savings to put the 25% down + bank fees to buy an investment property with the traditional 10/1 ARM that our lender requires. Hence why we want to get into a house hacking solution ASAP to turbo charge our savings and investment potential to hopefully purchase our first two investment properties by the end of this year. Thats one house hack and another investment property financed with a traditional 25% down.

Should we go through with buying a MFH with intentions to move in after our lease ends? Do we try to talk to our landlords to get out of the lease early? Do we just forfeit our security deposit and abandon our lease? I'm open to suggestions, thanks everyone!