Do significant due diligence on anyone you may choose to work with in any capacity.

The benefit of underpinning the basement would be increasing the foundation capacity and allowing additional levels to be added on top potentially.

For clarity; as with a trust, lenders do not exercise the "due on transfer/sale" clause when real property is transferred to the SAME individuals in an official capacity (e.g.

As far as the capacity, check with the sanitation/health department in the municipality it's located in.

They should be able to offset the debt of the investment property with a percentage of the rent ( this may be lender specific), and give you a good idea about your borrowing capacity.

When serving a buyer, seller, landlord, tenant or other party in a non-agency capacity, REALTORS® remain obligated to treat all parties honestly."  

We know that the appraisal might limit our loan capacity in this scenario.What is the potential future risk especially if the county rejects the official change to a duplex once we’ve bought the house?

They don’t have to act as an attorney in that capacity.

Or you drive around to see if any thrift stores have capacity for the stuff, which is your time.Another thing I do not like is because my building is small it does not pay to automate it, so I have to drive a hour to the building to take my lock off and show them the unit, sign the agreement, etc. 

HHI is at 98% capacity for rentals so I assumed 2% vacancy was the way to think about it.