I am currently in the market to purchase a tri-plex with the plan to live in one unit, make upgrades, and rent the other two out.

Are you able to find investments near where you live now?

If I were investing in eastern WA, or where my extended family lives in Pennsylvania, those 100k houses in good condition are a real thing there.  

Ideally we would love to live in my childhood home.

Toxic paint et al.Would you want your family living in house remodeled with cheap Chinese s**t?

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

I recently came across 1 acre asking for 314k in a very good residential and growing location, so the current owner has added 4 manufactured homes with 4 electrical meters, 4 septic tanks and only 1 water meter for all 4 homes, the homes are sitting on partial slab and partial pier & beam, he also added 2 storage sheds approx. 380sqft with the intention to make them ADUs they are still only the shell so I would have to get those ready to live in, so currently the 4 manufactured homes are being rented and bringing in 2800k a month, 3 of the homes are needing some TLC which could increment rents and possibly get me at 3600k a month, also being a 1ac lot this still leaves about 12,000sqft of raw land where you could build etc.So that is on the good side now the things I did not like so much, the lay out is poorly executed to where it makes it looked crammed up and not professional but it could be fixed.Another is that in reality there is only 4 livable units so that qualifies under a conventional loan but since they're are 6 units on the property the banks are wanting to take it as a commercial so we would have to move out the 2 storage sheds out in order to close as conventional.Another concern, technically you are only allowed to have one manufactured house or single wide in your property according to what I know but I know it could change according to zoning which I will investigate, so my question is has all this been accounted for and if so how can I verify it so it wont leave me in a bind further down the road, I currently asked my agent for the appraisal of the property to see if that might verify.Any recommendations?

Quote from @Christina Weaver: Hi, @Steven Hamilton II  my husband and I live in California, a community property state.

I think I'll start out where I live and probably branch out outnof state once I build my knowledge and experience. 

I think this arrangement can suit both parties, he wasnt going to be able to keep the house but can still live there for super cheap.