My goal would be to live in the condo or coop for a year or two and then rent it out!

Since I live here and am within 15-20 minutes to all my properties I chose to self-manage.

They live on the first floor of a small ten-unit building. 

Lovely couple and her sister living in House . great tenants . sister says she might move back to Florida one day and refuses to sign the lease renwal along with the others. 

It sounds like you aren't the guy for that conversation.

A little background info about myself, I currently work outside the U.S. for 9-10 months out of the year and live in California.  

They have a whole department that investigated "occupancy fraud", which is a felony.The rules state that you must live there for at least 1 year.  

I was thinking of living in one of the units for at least 3 year probably more.

YES replace the furnace, 1800ish, ASSUMING is about 1k- 1500 sq ft house  Boy things are cheap where you are . roof is $450 to $600 a sq depending on pitch here in Maryland  I know I paid $550 a sq  ( 55 sq OUCH) when I lived in SC, total rip off, Material cost them about 100 bux a sq, 450 a sq profit for two days, Not a bad gig. 

My living expenses were almost completely rolled into the business model and I lived among an ever changing group of guests who made life lively and entertaining.