The rules are designed to prevent related parties from engaging in exchanges that shift high basis property for low basis property, followed by a sale of the low basis property, effectively "cashing out" without recognizing gain.If you sell a property to a related party as part of a 1031 exchange, both you and the related party must hold the exchanged properties for at least two years following the exchange.

Meet with a local banker & schedule a time to talk with a mortgage broker, they'll give you at least a baseline of what kind of down payment options and rates are out there.After that, if you're still wanting to research more creative options, do some looking into seller financing (a very hot topic with good, and bad, advice out there), look into private lenders, and commercial financing options.If you're wanting to live in 1/4 of your quadplex, then conventional residential loans may in fact be your best option as you can purchase that with a fannie/freddy loan with very low down, and use up to 75% of the income from the property toward your own income. 

And like many other cities, vacancy rates are still low, lots of demand for housing of all types.  

We are looking for low maintenance (so primarily new construction or >2000 and well maintained/rennovated) single family homes.

I would upgrade properties every 12-15 months as allowed by low down payment loans if my significant other wasn’t risk adverse and opposed to moving.

After 2 years you can apply for a “Rent consideration” (I think that’s what they called it) as long as you still live there and that may allow you to increase rents by more than the annual allowance (probably designed for unit that are very low rents).

You’ve developed a moderately fast wealth accumulation strategy that’s relatively low risk, enabling you to ride out down cycles, negative cash flows, unexpected necessary expenditures, etc.  

I feel this gives me the flexibility to find the right solution for my client and not just sell what my bank offers.I'll also throw in my 2 cents on common differences I've seen in my career:CDFIs - Because of their subsidized financing structure, they have the ability to be a low cost lender (and sometimes provide grants).

We'll certainly want to keep the property tax basis as low as possible if we hold it.

Low value markets might be Pennies on the dollar like you allude to.