FHA qualification questions

[Sakshi Rambhia]

1. I'm looking into buying my first multi-family property on an FHA loan. My lender for the Bay Area said that when calculating qualification, they would have to assume I would occupy the largest / most expensive unit and that cannot be included in the calculation. However, my lender for NYC area mentioned that they could use any unit, even the smallest one, for owner occupancy. Is that a SF area specific rule or is one of my lenders mistaken?

2. A property I'm looking at is currently rented to a co-living space that is renting out each room separately in every unit (with an empty unit). My lender in the Bay Area said that I cannot use existing room-by-room rent, they would have to use the projected rent for the entire unit (obviously way lower) which does not make sense to me.