Agreed with @Theresa HarrisGet a contractor recommendation (or multiple) from your friend and reach out to GCs yourself to have a couple of quotes and ideas for the renovation project.During the walkthroughs, you can pick the contractor's brain regarding pricing on different material grades, efficient layout ideas, etc.

If property has good layout I have seen many cash cows pop up there.

THat 2/1 is 700k-ish, just now I see 4/2 900k-ish but has basement and unique layout, rent from several rooms can be $3k-$4k here, if mortgage is $4.5 then you actual mortgage is only $0.5-$1.5.

@Jay HinrichsJay - thank you for your thoughts and I definitely intend to be mindful of the delicate situation this may put the current owners in and handle it appropriately.

Without knowing more details about the specifics of the project being proposed as it relates to your property, it's hard to say if there are any obvious big red flags that could negatively impact your property's future value.That being said, I would try to find out as much information as possible about the new apartment building's design and layout - the two big things I would try to ascertain would be the location of the garage entrances/exits, as well as the location of any outdoor amenity spaces (pools, terraces, dog runs, etc).  

My main goal is to identify an opportunity that can be scaled from a couple of spots to a dozen, to several dozen eventually without the need to completely re-design or re-engineer the layout without respect to providing utilities. 

I will keep you updated as I go further into this project.Gratefully,Jay O. the units you are talking about are way too big, the layouts way too big, etc.

Assuming the 2 acres is 100% usable, I'd like to do buildings on one acre and outdoor RV/boat storage on the other acre.I've looked online at several companies that build storage buildings, but I don't know what size to ask for quotes on.Does anyone have software recommendations that can assist in planning and designing the layout of the facility?

I am on my second house hack and to be honest, the first one was a much better deal and makes more sense on paper BUT I got exactly what I wanted in terms of spacing, layout, and location for the second so it checked off a different set of boxes. 

Consider the layout of the duplex and whether reconfiguring one of the rooms into an additional bedroom would significantly increase rental income.