On the hunt for house hacking duplex

[Nicole Carey]

My husband and I are looking into buying our first duplex, or triplex if the right one comes along. Right now we are really interested in one in an up and coming town. One side is a one bedroom that had rented for $975 - I think we could raise it to $1100 minimum or $1400 if the rental market continues to be as crazy as it is here. The side we would be living in would probably rent for $1400 minimum, potentially $1500 or $1600 in a year or two (hip town becoming hipper).  

My main question is: What kind of cashflow do you like to see? I am talking about a 2BR & 1BR duplex. Asking price is 265,000. 

Some more questions and details: 

There are a few improvements we'd want to make just for us if we could afford it, i.e. installing a door/deck to the yard for our dogs, finishing a garage and heating it for an art studio, insulating an odd closet off of the main bedroom/knocking down the wall to make the master bedroom much larger. We are still pricing out the costs for those things. Are these improvements things that we should be calculating to figure out if it would still be a good investment or should we just base the calculation on what the property would rent for now vs. asking price? 

If I did my calculations correctly using the bigger pockets calculator I think there would be cash flow of $190 if I used the low end of rent guesses; $500 for the high. I also believe I estimated high for the capex, vacancy, etc. Should I have added the management in if we will be managing ourself? If not, that creates another $175 of cash flow per month. Sorry if these are silly questions. I'm an newbie.