While I realize that if a person really wants to find out who owns the LLC, they ultimately can with some personal effort or potentially the courts, I didn’t want people to be able to easily look up that information online (ie a simple Google search).

Military pay is documented on a Leave and Earnings Statement (LES).

Which strategy would be the most suitable to begin with, focusing on long-term growth?

So that was a low hurdle to improve on.

How fast were we supposed to act on this?

It can look good on paper but reality is another story. 

Ideally, I would love to buy a multi-family property and rent it out, I would consider house hacking but I mainly want to my first property to be one that I can improve on and have it generate income for me.

I love real estate and am devouring anything I can find on the subject of investing.

your loan officer is nuts.you can have multiple lots/parcels on one deed..

Right now, if I see a house I like, I'll take down the address and search it on my town's portal to obtain the owner name and address.