As she heads off to a year of volunteer service in AmeriCorps before beginning her professional career, she will not have much time to devote to considering or managing investments, so we're carefully considering investment options to recommend. 

I am Very thankful to BP community such as yourself who have devoted their time, experience, energy to write their wisdom for people like me to learn.

There are literally entire CLASSES devoted just to the notion of discounting and how it applies to investing, yet Gallinelli attempts to explain it in one paragraph and then apply it to real estate in another page or two.

If you're at the beginning of your RE journey, then 1) determine how much time you can/want to devote to your RE venture.Here're a few articles to help you decide on that:https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/10850/8...https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/10850/7...2) then within the area you selected in #1, pick a niche that you believe will work best for you and personally determined to make it a success. 

. - It depends on how much time you have to devote to real estate. 

I agree with Neil.Syndication and the associated costs with it is not worth it with smaller deals.Now to answer your question - your focus should be 2 things:FIND & meet private investors; andFINDING deals80% of your time should be devoted to those 2 things. 

I'm a buy and hold investor currently devoting all of my time to finding great deals.

I congratulate poor young men upon being born to that ancient and honourable degree which renders it necessary that they should devote themselves to hard work.

As of now, all of my work hours are being claimed by the marketing business, and I am struggling to find even one hour daily to devote towards real estate. 

The BTA ruled that “where the owner of rental property devotes it rental purposes and exclusively to the production of taxable income, the property is used by him in a trade or business”.On appeal, the 6th Circuit came to the conclusion that the building (rented to multiple tenants) was a TB, but they got there via different means.