But we purposely work markets that are not as saturated.

I'm using Lending Home for this purpose.

For purposes of limiting liability and also creating the potential for expansion, I was planning to purchase the property in an LLC.

This serves two purposes.

Voila, I have furnished rental for STR purposes. 

Not perhaps the usual purpose for that, but it was a mechanism to allow me to withhold and pay taxes and UI (my wife is a Schedule C filer with one employee so I am very familiar with the tax withholding and remittance to the government processes).They averaged about 35 hours of work per week (some weeks more than 40 and got overtime, others less) while they were there. 

The purpose of a 1031 is to defer payment of capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes.

I purposely live 3 minutes from Home Depot for a reason.

I really like the idea of building purpose built rental properties to my design/specs with a trusted contractor and lender so they can be repeated over and over again.

For tax purposes - I am not sure how everyone acquired the properties but you shouldn't be reporting your parent's income on your return.