Anyone in your life, circle, company that is doing well you should want to support them and help them grow not suppress and try to gain ownership, that's bad business and i've never seen it work out for anyone.

While it all might work out and you end up on the right side of things, but it could just as easily go the other way. 

I personally think you should invest in an area like Pittsburgh where you can pick up your first few properties either single family or multi-unit at low risk as you can pick up single families in the $50-$100 range easily and rent at a 8-12 CAP and if things don't work out, or you change your strategy (i.e. decide to sell off your single family to focus on multis or vice versa) you can do so easily and for profit in most cases2.

It's expensive and will not work out as a cashflowing property.Why would you need a seller finance for 5 years at 4.25 %.

There are QI's on this board like @Dave Foster who can also cover this aspect for you.As to the original question, where you complain about people saying "talk to a CPA", I took a real estate accounting course, meets once a week, 3 hours each, and it took them two sessions to cover all the specifics of 1031's. so its not something that someone will spend all afternoon with you on it on all the particulars.  

I have found this does not work out well if you try to show ahead of time.   

From there you could work out a payout for bird-dogging for them.

I had to work out a deal with the bank to allow me to make only $650/month mortgage payments for the first 2 years so that the property could just barely take care of itself.

If he wants all his cash at once you could buy the house from him using an FHA loan once you qualify for the loan.It sounds like if this one does not work out you will be in a position come September to qualify for a loan yourself and not have to go a more difficult route.

Looks like classic BRRRR should work out.