How to protect myself with this deal?

[Darrick P.]

I did a search but really didn't find anything that I could relate to my situation so here are the details. I'm working with an experienced investor who has taken me under his wing and after building a relationship we're going to be doing a deal together. The deal is for one house and 3 empty lots all owned by the same person. We're picking up the house and lots subject-to with 30k left on the mortgage. The owner will get 30k after resale and there's 75k in rehab work to be done. So that puts us at 135k. The ARV of this 3 story row home (not including the lots) is 400k. That gives us a ton of room to work with.

Once we get the properties under contract we plan to rehab and sell the house and keep the lots for future development of (3) 3 Apt. Row home buildings.

Since we have not formed and LLC together and he found the deal. I'm not sure how I protect my investment for my part of the rehab. I'm asking here to make sure that I'm not being taken advantage of. This is part of my due diligence to make sure that I'm going about things the right way, even though I have no reason not to trust my soon to be partner. The plan is to split the cost of the rehab 50/50 and after the sale of the house, pull the rehab money out and roll the rest of the profit over into developing the lots (at which time we'll form 1 or possibly 3 LLC's or S Corps together for those deals to protect ourselves if something goes wrong with any of the individual projects).

Should I have my name on the Subject To contract along with his for this deal? I'm just at a loss and would like opinions of how to protect myself in a situation like this because after the sale there's a ton of money left on the table.

Thanks in advance.