I know it is common to use 10% as a vacancy factor when trying to model performance of an asset or a collection of assets.

What I do is offfer my angry tennants the opportunity to get into real estate investing, offer them work in maintaining properties, collecting rents, and offer guidance on them being able to buy their first place of their own.Don't you think they would love to have at minimum two jobs to be able to save up the money , work their ends off to build up their credit, hunt down deals, and negotiate a purchase, invest their money knowing there is no guarantee of ever getting your money out of it or of profiting, have to spend thousands of dollars or 10's of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to be a ble to provide others with housing?

Hi Amber and welcome to the great resource that is Bigger Pockets!

Similarly; if you've put your money into a project and the project is in jeopardy of going sideways, you're more likely to lean into it and get it done and either sold or rented vs walking away because you're losing someone else's money.They also don't go to 100% because it costs money to foreclose and if they're already at 100% loan to value, they lose money if they even have to enlist a collection agency much less foreclose.

I know very little about commercial space but have a good commercial property resource.3) Use private money and leverage my flexible schedule to manage deals.4) Go into saving mode until I have enough money saved to continue deals.Anything I'm missing here or any recommendations from someone who has made this transition?

At least this way she leaves (hopefully) on good terms and you continue to collect rent the entire time she's occupying the property. 

In addition, we have been working with real estate investors for 10 plus years so happy to be a resource to you when it comes to questions or making contacts.

Ask the people who collect the taxes.Don't let an auction buy be your very first deal.

Take a look around BP for the "90 day challenge" - plus I would bet on a number of upcoming resources and webinars designed to help people with buying their first property by the end of the year.If you've already done all that and are still struggling with which direction to go, the bottom line is that it doesn't matter.

I collected rent.