The 2 day training was all pressure tactics and they use your emotions to get you to sign up for the expensive program which was held in CA where they present on a huge stage with lights and music with a party atmosphere.  3 days of partying and only enough content to demonstrate some possibilities in RE.

I'd love to develop a clean, open, legal, and comfortable win-win situation for these sellers. 

Friends have suggested that we meet with a real estate attorney in order to ensure that we have everything lined up legally prior to beginning the endeavor.Our real estate agent gave us the name of a seasoned real estate attorney in South County and we are meeting with him next week.

Once again, I think you need to double check the value of time here... 1hr of a walk through vs countless hours of legal action.

It sounds good, I know its bad, I know it holds legal issues...who has done it, would they do it again on a tight schedule?

I understand the reasoning behind placing real estate in an LLC: for the owner to shield himself/herself from personal liability in the event of legal action.However, is one LLC enough?

I understand the reasoning behind placing real estate in an LLC: for the owner to shield himself/herself from personal liability in the event of legal action.However, is one LLC enough?

I would say you are correct, anyone can fake it, but the chances of someone risking committing fraud while having the above verified via 3rd Parties strikes me as being somewhat low.In fact, it would be someone who would be willing to commit other crimes then just giving false information to a Landlord.If the person got away with it like Bernie Madoff (haha... his last name is really a Pun), it's very difficult to blame the victim in this case because 99% of people will wind up renting to this person.I don't think you will find that there was a Landlord that had issues with a tenant after getting all that verifiable evidence.If there was a few tenants, it is so rare that it would be deemed insignificant risk.

What is the best way to protect ourselves legally and structurally from each other in the many worst case scenarios?

Are you getting a signed contract for your deal/involving an attorney or just using some “legal-zoom” type resource to draft the terms?