1031 exchange in this seller's market? Kansas City area

[Wei Xia]

Hey everyone, I have a couple of questions regarding 1031 exchange and wonder if anyone has experience or input that can share with me!

So we are looking into doing 1031 exchange to try to take out the equity of one long term property and put into multiple short term rental properties, this way we turn one less cash flow property into multiple more cash flow properties.

I have 2 major concerns about doing 1031 exchange:

1. I am worried that in a seller's market like now, everything is selling so fast, will we be able to make the timeline to identify 3 properties within 45 days? From my understanding, if sellers have multiple offers on their property, they will most likely pick the one that isn't 1031 exchange? Just because most people who are doing 1031 exchange won't end up buying all of the 3 identified properties so the odds of the contract fall off is greater? And in our case we are trying to buy 3 properties, does that make the deadline even more tight?

2. I have learned from multiple articles/persons on BP and investor's meet up that there isn't any insurance or regulations regarding the QI(qualified intermediary) who will be holding all the proceeds from the sale. And some investors have unfortunately fallen into scams. How can we identify who are the scammers and who are legit QI and what aspects can we investigate before handing over such big amount of money?

Forgive me if I am not making myself clear as I am still trying to understand the whole process. 

Thank you again for anyone who can give me some advise or input!