It’s a solid option to boost your chances of actually reaching the homeowners you’re targeting.

Do not give them a second chance.

If they're not familiar then it's your chance to get your foot in the door by bringing 1031 education to them.It's been a few years since I checked but at one time NAR showed statistics that of all the transactions potentially qualifying for 1031 exchanges, only about 10% were actually handled that way. 

We're getting our feet started in real estate and we'd love to have the chance to connect with our peers or someone who's just as interested in real estate!

Architecture did a design and well respected contractor estimated the buildout of 4 plex would be an additional ~800k for total project cost of ~1M. it would be ~1.2M for the 7 plex.  

My initial guess would be look at 1 bed 1 bath rentals in the area but is that the best way to estimate?

If you're refinancing to a business purpose loan that's totally fine, but chances are good you'll need a lease in place for the unit you were occupying so the lender feels confident that it's strictly going to be used as an investment property.

Depending on your estimate of the ARV and the ability to raise the rent on the 1BR, this looks like a "lendable" deal, IMO. 

So in fact, I have the place rented (was going to show it to others on the slight chance they fell through.

Look at before and after pics and real estate listings for a flip and estimate what work they did and what it would cost you.