Buyer clients Bryan & Kristina found my on-line reviews and reached out to me in early Jan. to help them with their SF property search. After two or three months of shopping, we lucked into a condo listing in lower Noe Valley that didn’t receive any offers during the first few weeks, and they decided to go for it. It was great timing and they were able to get the property for under the asking price by $15K. This deal will be remembered because it involved an out-of-the-area lender, which put a lot of stress into the situation. Buyers like to shop on-line for interest rates, and often find good mortgage deals; however, out-of-area lenders quite often are not familiar with our style of SF property offerings, and may use appraisers and/or underwriting guidelines that can create problems. In this case, this was a two-unit condo complex, with no reserve account, and the other unit was a rental….these are things that need to be addressed prior to them issuing an approval letter, and smart agents know this. The chosen lender assured us it ‘wouldn’t be a problem’ however when it came down to underwriting, we had to jump through hoops to keep this deal together. Another red flag: when the assigned appraiser is coming from entirely another county and needs directions into the city to find the house! Yikes & thank goodness we caught that potential disaster in time to request that the appraisal be re-assigned to a local vendor. After some nail-biting delays, this deal finally closed, and we all breathed a sign of relief.