House hacking in the Tri-State area for first time home buyers

[Katelyn Kelly]

Hi everyone, first time posting! My SO and I are currently living at home (he is in Bergen County N.J., I'm in Fairfield County CT) and saving like crazy in order to buy our first property together. We both have 9-5 jobs in NYC and our dream is to find a duplex, triplex, or quad in either north Jersey, Fairfield county CT, or Westchester county N.Y. to house hack. We would ideally put down 3.5% through an FHA Loan, and I can see $750k being the top of our price range as first time home buyers. I've been digging around a lot and it seems like our best options are in CT, in terms of neighborhood quality, price, and something that doesn't look like an absolute dump needing a gut renovation. Does anyone have experience trying to find Multi Family homes in the surrounding NYC area? Do you have better luck in one area vs another? Is house hacking even an option for these crazy expensive zip codes? Any advice at all would be much appreciated!