My wife and I currently live in a duplex we own in Tucson, Az. Our plan is to move out of this property in about 2.5 years or so when we have a second child and will need more room. I'm trying to come up with a plan of what we want to do. The three options we're looking at are
1. Keep the duplex, rent both parts, and buy a single family house for us.
2. Keep the duplex and long term renter in one part while attempting to do short term vacation, corporate, or travel nurse accommodations with the unit we live in now.
3. Sell the duplex and buy a single family house for us to live in and a new investment property.
The mortgage, insurance, and taxes come to $1556.54 a month and we collect $1020 in rent a month for the other unit (3 bedroom with car port). Our unit is smaller (2 bedroom with garage) but nicer than the other one so we think we could probably rent it for around $800. So after monthly payments we would have $263.46 per month or $3161.52 per year for maintenance, taxes, etc.
What things should I take into consideration to make this decision? Any experience on the difficulty or tax implications of selling a house hack to buy a house and an investment property?