... that booking will put me at ZERO vacancy for 2017

Typically, this can be what is called a sponsor and you would leave most of the "meat on the bone" for the sponsor/investor partner for bringing the cash and/or the experience to the table for you.

I remember reading a quote of his " People don't care how much you know unless they know how much you care"  This stuck with me at a very young age and I reflect on this all the time. 

I didn’t expect it to be fixed, just not held against me at the end.

There are many pockets of nice bread and butter homes for rentals .Most wholesalers are overpaying and so there is little meat on the bone.The market has cooled down from the massive appreciation we saw over the last 5-10 years.Wish you the best.

I think separating the units and adding laundry upstairs would be the best solution, but quite costly for me at the time being. 

Best of luck with your Real Estate Investing Career.Networking is how to succeed in this space and as such I wanted to give you an open invitation to feel free to reach out to me at any time.

This in turn allows you to offer a lower price to the owner and leaves more meat on the bone for your strategy.

Walmart is building a meat distribution center and Panasonic just broke ground on an electric vehicle battery plant.

As for the two terms that you had asked about: principle (this is the portion of your monthly payment that goes towards paying down the loan balance itself and can also be used to describe the total amount that the loan is actually for) Escrow (this is a portion of your monthly loan payment that is set aside in a 3rd party account (typically a title company) that is meat as capital that 3rd party uses to pay certain bills on your behalf; most often this is property tax and insurance.