Either way, if you can cancel out your living expenses completely with this house hack while gaining experience managing the STR, I don't think you can beat that.

I am seeking insights and recommendations from the community regarding potential locations in and around Orlando where full duplexes might be more readily available within my budget.My plan is to house hack, and based on my initial calculations, I anticipate an extra expense of $1.5K beyond rental income to cover the mortgage.

I've done that twice now.Hard Money Lenders can be a great resource but they generally want to lend to someone with experience and the terms are expensive versus conventional financing. 

BUT the benefit of a house hack is to save money on living expenses.

They are expensive (30% fee) but they cover 100% of all management responsibilities.

Current partnership for one Single Family is approx 50k down payment, 10k partnership/management fee, 10k put in bank account for operating expenses.

As many have said, there is always a buyer for the right price, and especially in todays environment with such expensive debt, it is important to price correctly.

You don't turn over as much utility expense in multifamily.

For example, zoning might require a larger lot sizes for more units, or more offstreet parking than you can provide, or building codes might require the building be upgraded to have a very expensive sprinkler system if you add a unit.

Real estate is always expensive.