Chasing A Dream Of A “family Compound” On A Small Budget, Unsure How To Proceed

First time posting. Believe it or not I’m actually an attorney but this is out of my league and I could use some direction.

Location: New Jersey, south jersey

My husband and I are chasing a dream and I could use some advice on where to start. We currently own a single family home with minimal land for 4 years. We would like to buy property and move both our mothers onto that property (but not into our actual home) to live out the rest of their lives. They are both widowed and we have a young son so it would just be nice to have us all on one property.

The problem is I don’t know where to start. There are a couple ways we could do this that I’m aware of: buy land and build from scratch, buy a house with land in a municipality that is friendly to ADUs and plop some double wides or granny pods on the property, build attachments onto a house directly if AUDs are not allowed, possibly other options we haven’t thought of.

I just don’t know how to go about figuring out the best options. We aren’t working with a lot of money, we might have $125k-ish for a down payment, maybe $450k budget for my husband and I to secure the main house/property, and both grandmoms could kick in some money, maybe like $75k each for their dwellings/improvements.

We also would like to make sure we have some legal documents set up to protect everyone. Like the structures on our property pass on to us when the grandmoms pass, so we don’t have to fight siblings for inheritance on it. The plan is to have the grandmoms give siblings and grandchildren other inheritance or life insurance polices to protect the “family compound” upon their deaths. But we also want the grandmoms to know they have a right to not get kicked out either (there has been some in-law strife in the past).

We have some location restrictions, we are currently in Vineland but one grandmom is still working in Burlington, and my husband just got a new position in Fort Dix so moving closer to there would be optimal. Most our family and friends are closer to the cherry hill/philadelphia area so getting further Northwest from our current vineland location is the goal so we aren’t an hour away from everyone.

We both have siblings that had a bit of a “failure to launch” and it’s obvious we will need to at least partially take care of them especially when they become unable to work. That’s prob 20-30 years away but something we are anticipating. We’ve also thought that maybe as we age, our son would take over the main house with his spouse/family and we could move into one of the granny pods for our final days. That of course hinges on my son wanting that but you can see we are trying to just plan for the future here.

Like I said, idk where to start. Do I talk to a land use attorney first? Try to find a municipality first? Realistically we won’t be financially ready to search in earnest for about a year but I’m stressing over how to do this. We had a lovely real estate agent that helped us buy our current home but she made it clear she didn’t have any expertise or advice on this specifically. She even mentioned she wants us to keep her posted as she might want to do something similar with her mother in the future. So she won’t be much help lol.

Any advice on this is much appreciated. Please let me know if I’ve left out anything pertinent and I will answer any questions that might help steer me in the right direction.