Note if market rent was $1650 as OP indicated with a pet and the PM charged 10% ($165/month), the OP would have been $155/month ahead of his self managing revenue.If you are not going to manage properly, hire someone who will. 

Zoning: the home is in Vista, CA in an office professional (OP) zoning district.

OP is very disconnected from the property, what if it's an "80's special"?

Look, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the premise, I was just answering the OP's question.

@Steve King  some of the indy morris investors are reporting getting rent checks when their houses are sitting there vacant and trashed... so I would think this OP would want to have a realtor go do a BPO for him pay 100.00 have a reputable 3rd party broker go take pictures do comps and knock on the door of the home and or the neighbors neighbors will know if its rented or not.

I hope the OP gets something out of this post.Cheers!

(not intended as a criticism of the OP).

The exception would be if the buyer broker does a lot of work and the listing guy will NOT co-op on the deal.Otherwise, let your broker has out a split with the listing agent.Unfortunately, most of these buyer rep agreements mean after about a month, you get in frequent calls about if you've found a deal. 

You can also ask a Broker to pull a list of recently leased properties and show their co-op fees.

The short answer is: Don't let tenants make improvements.By following that approach, you avoid the sorts of issues that are mentioned in the OP here.Edit: Of course, that is sound advice for Residential property.