I traded some private coaching for his son in order to be able to purchase any multifamily unit of his that he has procured in a recent buyout from another aging investor.

Property you purchase with the intent of holding for productive use in business trade or investment and not primarily for resale does qualify for 1031 treatment.There is no statutory holding period but in general the longer the better.  

I have no problems stating that they know their business, understand the market and in many cases, for certain areas, literally know building-by-building who owns it, when it last traded, the condition of the property, the tenant base, etc, etc.

Was there a contract with the trades or with a single general contractor ?

This would be a commercial note limited to 80% of the trade-in values of the vehicles and would be priced around WSJP + 2.50% with a 1% origination fee of the loan amount.

They are usually trading 150-300 basis points higher cap rates than an apartment would and would be valued as such.

Flipping is considered a trade or business activity, as opposed to passive investment earnings.  

Either  1) you will get no loan whatsoever, or 2) It is some BS combination of "trade accounts" credit.....Office Depot, Home Depot, and other misc useless businesses......Not a cash line of credit.Once you qualify for any kind of business line of credit, there will be No upfront fee, and more importantly it will be because you have established an Actual ongoing business that shows a profit, and consistent revenues over a few years.Time to turn on your BS detector.

So I'd gladly trade off a few bucks for lower risk at this point in my RE career. 

What makes that scenario much less likely to happen today are the reluctance of the banks and lenders to leverage themselves that much, the forcing, by regulation, to prevent them from getting too leveraged, and the collapse of those toxic assets that used to be traded around like a game of musical chairs, with the value only set by whoever was dumb enough to pay it, in the hopes there would be a bigger fool down the road.