My stepfather is a financial planner and he always told me that investing in the stock market was historically a better investment than real estate.  

While each component part is not overly hard to understand, there's a ton of steps, and each step has risk embedded in it AND you are dealing with people all along the way: brokers, land sellers, planners, politicians, bankers, construction folks, renters, property managers, and buyers.

That it's zoned R2 almost guarantees that it's within city limits.Like @Jay Hinrichs & @Chris Martin say, just go to the city planner and ask about whether it's possible and a second lot is conforming and how long the process takes.  

When the local Mercedes & Cadillac dealerships and Financial Planners started sending me stuff, it was much higher.

Greetings all,I have a background in construction engineering and management and I want to take on a role as a GC/Developer/Planner for new construction of a pre-fabricated home property.I'm planning on building multi-unit structures for rent in an urban lot, (I will have to get this lot re-zoned) but for the process of construction, I'm trying to determine which permits I absolutely need to obtain, and which inspections I need to conduct, and how much all of this is going to cost.In other words, I'm having difficulty in determining fact from fiction when it comes to inspections and permits, and distinguishing which ones I absolutely must obtain, and which ones are just "good to have."

I am a retired financial planner (more like disenfranchised), and I deliver a lot of CE courses to RE agents and their clients in Colorado, and I'm always thinking of helpful ways to explain real estate and financial concepts.

He will be a great organizer, planner, people manager, negotiator and money manager.

I am a former corporate strategist and financial planner also, so numbers are my passion.

David Keefer It's not the inspector, it's the planner.

They are not generally used by laymen for tax reduction, although high-end planners will use them for that purpose in different scenarios way beyond the scope of this post.I generally like your idea, not necessarily because it makes much money, but because it is a fairly low risk way to enter the business.