2) The taxes are competitively low for this specific house, last updated on 5/31/16. 

Still, its does get tricky in a more competitive markets like now, especially in volatile real estate markets like San Francisco.

Your first move should be to contact the realtor and ask them more info - they'll probably tell you anything you want to know in order to get your lead - and see how competitive the bids were, or whether the market will absorb your condo at that price or higher.  

It is between Global Property Solutions LLC (GPS, LLC) and Empire Property & Investment Co.

I think over the next few years and perhaps long term, we will only see the prices go up with the rates being where they are, the competition that always exists between lenders, closing agents, etc., and the housing market staying stagnant.

I would not worry if you have the ability to keep rents lower than your competition.

If you're in a huge demand area you probably won't have vacancy risk but your purchase price will be higher (more competition) so your returns will be lower.  

I don't know what a competitive fee is for CA because I've never used an attorney there for a real estate transaction - the CAR forms have always been sufficient.  

I would show the competition's quote, in writing, to your current lender.  

I don't know why Ray left RealtyShares, but my take on AlphaFlow is that they've (correctly) identified that there's going to be tremendous competition at the platform level (as each competes against the other for customers and deals, driving down margins), and that an aggregation play is a less crowded space in the market that also allows them to capture lots of data about dealflow and performance across the market.