Buying Multy Family with FHA

[Vase Petrov]

Hello

My wife and I bought our first house a year ago. It was on the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of things where uncertain, the market was crazy (it still is) and we decided to put 25% down payment with a conventional loan.

Now a year later we are looking into the possibility of buying a multy family property with FHA loan. We are not going to sell the curen house. The lender that we used is saying that if we keep the house we can't get a FHA loan in the same area (The multi should be a different area too than your primary now so that underwriting truly thinks you are buying a multi as a primary- her words), Is this correct? Is this the case with all the lenders? Is there any way around it? Because we love the area that we are in.

Thank you.