My wife and I are trying to move out into our forever home so we can rent this current living space out.My question is this: should we find our house first and get it under contract with intent to close, and then try to process finding out a renter?

The information has kind of dribbled in but I see nothing in your latter posts to indicate any unfavorable tax situation other than that ridiculous claim by your accountant that 1031 wasn’t available.You owned it for multiple years and demonstrated your intent to hold.Your accountant evidently treated it the same and gave you the depreciation benefit.It sure sounds to me that you’re going to only pay capital gains rate and have to recapture the depreciation. 

If you're asking if I understand the legislative intent of tax law, yes, I understand some of the legislative intent of some tax law. 

The original intent of buying this property was to fix it up in order to do a seller finance deal with my sister and brother-n-law.

Our intention is to develop this lot into a duplex and house hack it.

Your intention is to live there, and you can’t control the military relocating you.

You must live in an FHA for a minimum of one year or have that INTENT.

It is my intention to STR the subject property.

Not for me...I'm not a fan of putting 50% down on your third property when the intention is to simply use the extra income from it to help pay off the loans faster. 

I'm very serious with real estate investing and treating it as a business with the intent to scale :)