I'm a potential first time home buyer...looking primarily in JC and was hoping for some experienced input. Anyone have experience with buying a condo in a building that has commercial space (i.e. retail) in the building? Lenders have stricter down payment requirements, but I'm curious if people in this situation have found these requirements negotiable (especially in the past 9 months or so).

Also - what's the basic logic here? Are the lenders just concerned about higher vacancy levels?

I'm stumbling across this issue on a few places and I was curious if anyone else has been there.