They can protect one house and one car. 

What are the bare minimum requirements I should request in a written agreement/legal document with this individual to best protect my asset in case his investment fails or falls short.

My focus would be on spending all of your spare time in learning about the different investment options, the real estate segments you might be interested in and understanding the trends in each.

Since you will be on both the buy/sell side - you would then be paying 100% of the transfer tax.I suppose you would have to weight the cost of creating the LLC(which includes the additional cost to transfer it to an LLC) to the cost of the umbrella package and weighting the pros/cons of how each strategy will protect you.

or try for sale by owner (Craigslist)...We'll explain that there will be more fees involved, and that it will take much longer to sell (especially in this market, compared to a few months ago) - but that if they're not in a rush of any kind, that it's usually their best option...In our experience, the best thing is just to give people real advice, and if you can really help them out - tell them that.Small margins are also tough for rehabbers, who are taking on risks and spending lots of time and money on the rehab.Best,Sean

You can't just call and get legal advice over the phone.I imagine the longer the neighbor does nothing here with respect to protecting "her" land, the easier your quiet title action will be.

We are spending a few months trying to learn as much as possible about real estate investing before buying our first rental property this spring.

@Peter Knox You need to decide for yourself as to how much time you want/can spend on RE investing.

Send 50 or 60 out to see what kind of response you get before you spend a ton of money on printing.

If not, I'd recommend going through a title company as they have a full team dedicated to protecting us for these specific issues.