FHA 203K - Need to explain "downgrading" from SFR to Triplex

[Scott Ellis]

Checking if anyone else has gone through this while house hacking.

My wife and I have a triplex under contract near our primary residence. We're currently renting 2 of the 3 rooms in our primary. Our plan is to convert our SFR into a full time rental and move into a unit in this triplex.

We're doing an FHA 203K loan and my mortgage broker's biggest concern is that underwriting won't approve the loan because they won't believe we'd "downgrade" from a home to a multi-family.

In my head, it's pretty cut and dry.  We've been renting rooms, so we're actually moving from a shared living environment to our own private unit.  We'd be shifting from having to pay some of our mortgage to having to pay none of our mortgage, which seems like an upgrade.

We also want to become real estate investors and from an investment point of view, it makes good sense to live in a unit for one year into order to control that asset with such little money down and be able to finance the rehab.

And lastly, we signed several documents stating that we understand it's a crime to not live there for a full year.  So. . . since we're not criminals, we'll be living there for a year (I get that a percentage of people probably lie on this.)

So. . .

Does anyone have any experience with what type of language or reasoning helps win over an underwriter whose "downgrade" red flag has gone up?