I'm hoping to add this as a start to my portfolio, rent and eventually sell once the wife, and I are closer to retirement age.

But even then, seller financing is rarely substantially better than another investment they could make (including trust deed lending, which will often be at a higher rate than seller financing)In my experience, the owners who find owner financing advantageous are at the ends of their careers and are not interested in looking for another investment (other than the usual retirement funding sorts.)

I am expecting to do 3-4 deals per year until I get to 20 properties or so and then snowball the debt so they are all paid off by retirement. 

Todd KnudsonSo you rolled the property from one retirement account into another, right?

After this 10 year period we plan to stop buying new properties and aim toward paying off current mortgages to help increase our cash flow in retirement.

I have cash reserves and money in retirement accounts, but I don’t want to dip too deeply into my reserves.

It's mostly retired people or people who have no money.

Did you set out to retire with real estate, did you have a goal or an amount you wanted to make?

End result here is that whether or not the new property was eligible for a 1031 exchange you were investing inside a qualified retirement account. 

At Rent to Retirement, we’ve been helping investors navigate these challenges for over a decade.