There are other financing alternatives, creative uses of assets is more of the basis of creative financing, seller financing in and of itself is not really creative financing, but it can be with complex transactions.

The other alternative is to stay with commercial loans that aren't included in the new laws, maybe.

I agree and disagree with all of them regularly in person and expect that I will alternately agree and disagree with all of them on these forums as well.

If they do not, you foreclose and either repeat the process or sale in a number of alternative ways.Lease options are another great startegy in that you receive profit via an option fee on day one, hopefully cash flow during the lease term, and then final payday on option exercise day (assuming they buy, if not do again).Look into this as it can provide a great way to make $ in RE, particularly these days where loans are hard to come by and many buyers do not have the proper credit scores to qualify for traditional financing.Good luck to you.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a local car wash waiting for my truck, & I called a mortgage broker about some info I sent him to get pre-qualified for a loan.

You can go to your clerks district office and request a list of probates, alternatively you can pull your counties' appraisal district data and look for parcel information in which the "mail to name" contains "Estate of", these are typically probates, from there you can do a bit of research online to find potential relatives. 

Are there any alternatives to the 1031 exchange to avoid capital gains? 

Alternatively, there are some RIA’s who will take a smaller up front fee (or no fee at all) and instead take an AUM fee of .05 - 1% of the deal every year, taken out of monthly income, for the life of the DST (typically 5-7 years).I always run the scenario a couple different ways - including paying the tax and getting out of the 1031 cycle - and let the math create clarity in the decision making process.

The previous firm was a big wire house that didn't specialize in DSTs or even alternative investments.

@Mike S. as an alternative or "backup" to a 1031 exchange, you can likely solve the tax deferral issue with an investment that includes cost segregation and bonus depreciation.