First deal in the works

[JD DiGiacomandrea]

Hey all. I think I finally might have my first deal. I have been looking in the Rochester NY market for about a year now and have finally figured out that the MLS is not working for me. I found an off market deal and I think it is going to cashflow. I ran my numbers pretty conservatively and still see a $350+ per month positive cashflow. It is a duplex in a Suburb of Rochester. I have two minor bumps in the road right now and I wanted to see if anyone else had some advice on these.

First, the lot is zoned as a single family, but the duplex seems to be pretty well separated and I feel it could get rezoned pretty easily. I checked on the town code and the type of zoning it has is capable of having the dwelling changed from a single family into a dual family through a building permit process. In the mean time this is making the bank financing tricky. They state they can only underwrite the loan by calculating rent from one side of the duplex, which throws the numbers out of whack obviously. Has anybody gone through this? Are there better ways to finance this?

Secondly, the property has a pool that would be shared by both tenants. I anticipate this property to be rented to a small family with kids, and maybe a young couple on the other side. I am a bit worried about liability with the pool  in the backyard. What are some of the risks, and mitigation I should be aware of with something like this?

All advice welcome!

JD