I would think this is a common practice that lenders perform, but if not....message me.

Are there any common pitfalls I should avoid?

One of the commonalities is that all these social media gurus like to hear themselves talk.

While a deposit is almost always preferable, you should make a common sense business decision based on the circumstances and condition of the property, in my opinion.

I dropped Revere Pewter and have mostly used Light Pewter as a common color in the house with kitchens and bathrooms being something colorful, usually blue for kitchens and green for bathrooms.I use HD Behr Marquee which is around the middle of HD paints in quality.

His recommendation was to setup title with two trusts as tenants in common.

I'd certainly recommend doing some kind of environmental study given the chemicals and such that could have been used there but more-so I'd be curious if the city wouldn't have a testing requirement to redevelop. 

After a few folks in the neighborhood became worried about the 2 chemical fires, they had a PG&E "information" meeting.  

., it’s common to ask for a down payment of 10-20% of the sale price. 1.

Invariably, there's commonly some version of "we've always done it this way" or "because person X said so last time" or "well you just can't do that" that is creating the roadblock.