Jobs are hard to fail at when bosses tell you what to do, but I'm not a big fan of bosses and I like deciding where to devote my time.  

How much time and energy do you want to devote to it to save the 8-10% of your rental income. 

You have experience and if you devote your time to finding and executing on larger deals, your return will be better.

There is an entire Wikipedia page devoted to Extraterrestrial Real Estate.

Jeff, 1) 1031 Crowdfunding is a site devoted entirely to syndications that do this. 2)  For vetting a syndication, different investors do it differently because every investor comes from a different financial situation and has different goals and risk tolerance.

My husband and I were just talking about when we really began devoting a lot of our energy into acquiring properties about 4 years ago.  

Start learning how to build business credit - it can be more important than personal credit, but you'll need both to get started.In fact, devote the time you have before turning 18 to getting educated.

Why would he lose other money making projects so he can devote his time and experience to this project, all the while making sure it is successful? 

Still, for you, house hacking can still be done but it is going to take a keen devotion to the numbers. 

Might be something to check on with your local building official before devoting too much time to the process.