Make sure you have a lease, outline rules, responsibilities, expectations.

Recently, a friend from church told me he was planning on buying a duplex and outlined the basic house hack to me. 

If I actually knew you I would give you a 2 hour outline of my best methods to grab an easy deal, set you on your way, and tell you to call me if you ever needed me. 

This is very common in the CRE world (usually using Limited Partnerships), and Single Asset Entities or Single Purpose Entities (you'll see SAE or SPE thrown around a lot) are the only way to insulate your deals from each other.Depending on what type of deals you do (flips or buy/hold/rent) you may be able to have the actual dollars flow through the operating company, just creating a paper P&L for the asset level entity.Again, I'm not an attorney, but have seen this done in the CRE world, and its the rough outline I follow for my investments.

The lease didn't outline details, so I want to be mindful of how things are worded.

Make sure they outline the scope of work, for example, electrical, plumbing, structure, cosmetics, etc.

There's no need to go in front of the ZBA for a variance. http://www.phila.gov/li/Pages/Zoning.aspxYou may already be grandfathered in, check the Zoning Archive to see if one of the previous owners filed a use registration permit outlining use as a two family:http://www.phila.gov/zoningarchive/

That said, what your outline is pretty much spot on.Buy: you might be able to get 100% financing from HML, you may not.

Their approach sounds very similar to what I already have outlined...

You're certainly in the right place, but if you're looking for specific team members to join you, I'd recommend outlining who it is that you're looking for so that the right people reach out.