If you plan to be investing at home, you will need to keep in mind that areas such as financing, taxation and regulation are different here in Canada.  

@Benjamin CowlesAnd issue with lease options from a taxation point of viewLook at these six points to avoid a lease option being re-characterized as a sale1.

The best advice, as @Ali Boone  mentions above is consulting cross border tax and legal specialists who also have a good understanding of US real estate laws and taxation.

John Hyre  realestatetaxlaw.com is not cheap, but he specializes in REI, and in fact speaks on REI taxation and self directed IRAs, and is also a tax attorney. 

I live in California, and I have some properties in FL.  Also looking into other states (mainly GA and SC).  I have not researched it yet, but does anyone have advice on what I can expect tax-wise?  Will California ch...

Is there an optimized structure that will minimize taxation?

Just keep in mind that financing, regulation/legal and taxation will be a little different in Canada.Where are your planning to invest?  

There is also a cadre of other Canadians here, so if you have Canada specific questions (finance, regulation, taxation) there are folks to whom you can reach out.

A 401k is also not subject to UDFI taxation on leveraged investments as an IRA (Tradional or Roth) would be.

If you plan on investing at home, just be conscious that while much of what you read and learn here is universally applicable, there is a U.S.A. bias and things will be differences at home in the areas of finance, regulation, and taxation.