First post! FHA after buying a sfh cash?

[Desiree Steele]

First time home buyer (and poster!) here from Northern Kentucky. We are in the process of buying our first single family for cash. I've just now learned of the glorious idea that is "house hacking" and I'm rethinking my game plan.

The game plan would be to rent out the sfh and live in a unit of the multi, in order to qualify for the first time home buyers. Just curious if this is possible.

My question is, if we've purchased a home cash and want to buy a multi in a year, can we take out an FHA first time home buyer loan, even though we already own a property?

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Desiree Steele:

My question is, if we've purchased a home cash and want to buy a multi in a year, can we take out an FHA first time home buyer loan, even though we already own a property?

FHA loans are commonly used by FTHB, but FHA loans do not require that you be a FTHB. Kind of like all squares are rectangles, but that doesn't mean all rectangles are squares. 

Weird stuff comes up for folks that buy primary residences with financing, and then try to FHA a few months later. None of that stuff should come up for you, unless you intentionally start generating fake paperwork saying that SFR is your primary residence (they get owner occ homeowner's insurance, they take out a primary residence mortgage for the lower rate, they start claiming homestead exemptions, etc)... so don't do that stuff. It's a pure investment property, all paperwork should reflect that.