Smaller community banks in the area may be able to offer more competitive terms and conditions if you do your due-diligence.The bank will also want to see adequate cash reserves for a loan after your down payment and a hard money lender will want to see experience in addition to cash reserves and I've never heard of a hard money lender floating 100% of the project budget.  

Right now, the new buildings coming online have ridiculous prices, more competition, in the market theory, is the right response. 

Those can vary in the contract and for a competitive offer, I would suggest putting fewer contingencies but you have to know your risk.

Jobs, families, school districts, location, rental rates, housing being built etc, what your competition is, planned developments, hospitals, companies moving into area. 

Hard to say without knowing your budget, skills, and goals.If you are wanting us to randomly throw out effective strategies, here is one ... if LA proper is too expensive and too competitive for you, then go East young man ...

I offered to do some of the repairs identified in the inspection and to replace the kitchen flooring so hopefully he will see some value in that.We will definitely be researching the market for how the competition is applying a pet policy.

Was hoping to get some help on a refinance.I'm currently looking to do a cash-out refinance on a condo investment property and received some pretty competitive rates from eRates Mortgage.

This is the most competitive bid from contractors.

If we all did the same deals the competition would be ridiculous.

What I have found is this:  Both of those banks offer competitive rates for owner occupied loans and Navy Fed has a couple of really good first time home buyer loans.