Essentially, is the 1031 liability assigned to the LLC or each partner?

You want to be in control of your rental unit (which is essentially a business) and investing in a property with an HOA is a huge risk since you are no longer in control.

I am sure that Auction.com is getting paid for their service and that is why they add them to their marketing @Wayne Brooks, it is just another stream of revenue for auction.com leveraging the existing platform that they have already built.I have also seen houses lately hit auction.com barely two months past the sheriff sale (now as REOs), but they are pre mls and auction.com does not charge a buyers fee (no co-broker involved), I have bid on a number of those (usually tracked by me from the pre foreclosure stage), but never overpay so someone always outbids me lately on these open platform auction sites.Good Luck to you!!!

We essentially go from single units then jump up to 100 plus unit apartment buildings.

If you look for a duplex or small three plex it may be easier to manage with you living in one of the units while the tenants essentially pay your mortgage.

A hard money loan is essentially private money...your private money or your company's private money.  

I started out with literally no money and essentially in the same position you are in.

Tourism will slow down, jobs will be lost, houses will be left with mortgages that need to be paid by investors who depend on short term rental revenue to pay that mortgage. 

Purchase something with Cash below appraised value using his money, pay the interest, and then get a loan pull all the $$ out, pay him back and then have a loan with essentially no money down?

On page optimization (essentially rewriting all your content so it’s unique and will help rankings), off-page (all your local listings, directories, etc), back-link building, consistent content creation, getting that content on high authority pages as a third party contributor, ideally linking back to your site, etc.