I understand the merits of creating an LLC or some other legal protection entity.Now at my point, I don't own anything though I plan to get my first property in the next few months and rent it out (owner occupied).Do you suggest I create an LLC and buy the property through that?

I can chat with you about that if you think it will be of merit.  

Since the total gain was only 50K taking 80K in boot negates any benefit  to the 1031.These can be tricky and quite often it's best to go over a clients specific situation to see if it has merit for them.

Your opinion on 30k houses seems to have merit (depending on how you want to view an investment) and hearing different perspectives could actually be beneficial to a lot of people here, so I think if you were mature about it this could have been a very productive conversation.

As I've said repeatedly in these forums, there is no direct link to the time someone dies and filing of probate.You first need to determine if the opportunity has merit (equity). 

The judge then declared that she had to take the "standing" issue under consideration; in other words, she didn't know either whether it should be the IRA or the beneficiary (who is the self-director, but doesn't hold signature power) should be the correct defendant, or whether the IRA could even be sued at all (even though the IRA can hold title).We argued the merits of the case which was pretty clear-cut in my favor.After about two month we received the judge's written verdict which stated that the beneficiary had accepted responsibility by a) signing the contract (which he shouldn't have since he didn't have signing power - that should have been the custodian)b) showing up to trial and arguing his casec) counter-suing me for damagesThe judge showed that there was no question as to who was entitled to the deposit; we had not removed any contingencies and the escrow company was court-ordered to release the deposit to me.

There are a number of comments you have made about The PIP Group on the few threads that are out there about us, which do not merit the time for a response, but your assumption that we are a security and your slimy, lame attempt to try and encourage a report to the proper regulators speaks volumes of your true intent and character. 

just look at the deal on the merits of what your paying for it. 

I think you first have to look at the numbers and decide if there's enough equity to merit the effort required to solve all the problems. 

A rules, merit review, do state-by-state review, etc.