I think if you can learn a lot of the tricks of the big ticket trades, plumbing/electric/HVAC aka fixing the common problems, then you can survive a lot of costly service calls.  

Our lawyer is a friend and barters services with us, so that wasn't an issue for us, and my husband refused to give her one cent.

Now, out of our 15-20+ deals/mo, we're doing 30-40% flips and passing the rest on without major rehab via wholesale, wholetail, As-is resale, etc.  

My question is can any tenant deny the pest control service?

Let me know if I can be of service or if you need me to send you some listings with your criteria.

So only thing I see happening is you creating paperwork for the sake of paperwork. also, when you occupy a rental unit, it becomes your primary residence and you no longer can claim normal rental property deductions on the unit for the days in the year the property is not in service as a rental property.

I was kind of thinking to use this 5k to invest in our first house hack SFH  that needs some work (get a max up to say 75k max which would give us about 5% down or 10% if we could get a 50k house) and borrow the rest through either FHA or an 80-10-10 loan depending on the price of the house. 

she listed on her lease agreement she had one small service dog,  which was OK with me until I went to the house and realized she had two dogs, untrained, so I am sure none are service animals.

I don't love Oceanside but it will ebb and slow with the rest of San Diego. 

You've traded 'asset protection' for limited financing options.If you don't care about getting spam e-mail the rest of your life, try lending tree or quicken/rocket mortgage maybe just to see.