@Charlie MacPhersonAs a Canadian, @Parveen Tiwari's taxation considerations will be a little different than yours.Parveen:  if you own U.S.A. property directly in your name, or establish a flow-though entity {LP, S-corp, LLC (pending elections)} you will not be able to control when earnings are repatriated to Canada.  

All of them are single family and listed under my name in state of Arizona (while I live in state of California)I am planning to create LLC and move the houses from my name to that of LLC.

As tax season is approaching, I'm trying to find more ways to reduce my taxable income to get down to the more favored brackets.If I have passive income (rent) coming into an LLC, can I pay myself a management fee to count as income to invest into the solo 401k?

Did you form an LLC?  

.@ Jim, I am assuming you have to have an entity (LLC, Inc.) established in order to apply for a business loan?

I was listening to a podcast and the guest was saying you can't get a loan for a property for an LLC.

My next goal is to form a small LLC to purchase an apartment community.

I was planning to buy the house under an LLC anyways and have never setup an LLC before.

.- Need advice as to the best way to structure (LLC, Trust, Personal with umbrella)? 

Aside from just doing a quit claim deed from my personal assets to my LLC, I have been looking into various strategies to make this transfer happen.