Gift income?

If your mother's property will appraise significantly higher than the loan balance, then by letting you take the property subject to the existing mortgage, your mother will be giving you a gift of equity.

I prepared a gift of deed before her death between grandmother and my mom where my mom was suppose to deed over the entire property to grandmother.

Is there any way that we could use the tax law concerning gifting to our advantage, so I could somehow rent it to him (thus hopefully utilizing the 1031 and getting some income) but then ultimately gift it (or portions of it) to him, so he would eventually be the owner?

One in particular catering to Real Estate and gift-giving.

And you could see if there are some unique circumstances with that scenario that might allow you to simply treat that property as a second home that you're letting your mom stay at.The rent thing gets tricky even under that because that is technically money changing hands that should be taxed - or at least a portion of - since some of it could be deemed a gift up to a certain limit. 

I certainly don't want to steer them wrong, but instead, give them the gift of the Brrrr.

I believe this envelope was a gift-type envelope with designs on it (it's a 6-month campaign, so I'm not sure which particular envelope this came in).

Unless you just like to pay the state and your cpa extra fees, just send them a gift.

side note: Sellers gave between $50-$250 a year gift cards to each tenant annually - they were super sweet people and got walked all over by their tenants.