Since you have more control over the capital structuring with individual RE investments, I'd say you likely have more "levers to pull" to optimize for taxes, but that presumes that you (and/or your CPA) still knows which levers to pull, when, and how ... which gets us back to that whole active vs passive investment thing.

Before I start I would like to meet with a tax accountant to optimize my financials.

Most of the big brokerages have there on "proprietary" web sites... player like CBRE, Marcus millichap, etc.members.brevitas.com seem to be all there own stuff.

My husband is a web developer and we're always discussing ways to solve real estate pain points with tech...trying to come up with an idea to develop into an app.

Developing a track record takes time but that can be enhanced with purposeful creation of your own business web site, blogging, podcasts, newsletters, books, networking events, etc.

It might have more than a few "sub-optimal" years but you'll have locked in "cheap money" for 30 years.  

I hope to make lots of new friends in the industry and network with the greatest community on the web to success.

The days of the 2% (and even 1%) rule seem to be long gone and anything listed on the web that meet the criteria are usually tear-downs. 

He basically said he just needed 20k cash down for it, and said he had access to a hard money lender... not optimal, but I don't know anything, so I kept asking questions.

How you want to assess that has as much to do with your level of optimism, confidence, risk-tolerance, etc. as anything else.