Although historically by no means an unknown phenomenon, the social and cultural sciences are rediscovering multi-local living and residence. Research on residential multi-locality focuses especially on practices of multiple local daily life management, appropriations and their contextualisation, attachment, exchange, mobility and interactions between social relationships at different locations. Aside from quantitative approaches, research attempts to open up empirically observable dynamics and new qualities of multi-local life at a deep level. The consideration of the development of multi-local living arrangements in contemporary societies raises conceptual as well as methodological questions, and demands new and revised methods for investigating the phenomenon. After a phenomenological outline of residential multi-locality, the paper formulates requirements to be met by research designs, then outlines, with reference to a study of multi-locality of the family, how the subject may be treated in the framework of qualitative methodology and indicates potentials and limitations of the suggested approach.