Hello, I'm interested in owning rental property in certain areas of California where I see that there is rent control.

AKA control freak

Furthermore, I'm eager and motivated to ditch the 9-to-5 along with that rough commute to spend more time with family and to be in direct control of my income. 

I stick with gas for cooking, as the temperature is more easily controlled.

This also yields tenants more interested in eventually owning a home ("well, we will need to buy a fridge in 3 years anyways, once our down payment is saved... may as well get it out of the way"), meaning they have plans to move out in 2-3 years, thus auto-solving my problems with rent control.

As for the convenience of paying investment related expenses, the Solo 401k could have checkbook control built in without the need for an additional LLC owned by the retirement account.

I would like to know if anyone in here knows what there STRAWMAN is and if so have you taken control of it through filling a UCC-1 form?

Usually, you have a defined amount of time to control the house (say 2 to 5 years).

Previously I used to represent financial institutions in precisely these types of matters.

See what needs to happen for you to buy or at the very least gain managing control of the entity (assuming there is no clause in the lenders docs or operating agreement of the entity that prohibits this).Its a long shot but you may get some valuable experience from this.