The loan behind the offer matters more than the number on the front

I spent twenty years in the mortgage industry before I sold a single house. That is an unusual route into this job and it shapes what I do on the day offers come in.

Most sellers, looking at a stack of offers, read down the price column. That is the natural thing to do and it is also how deals fall apart in week four.

Here is what I read instead.

Pre-qualified is not pre-approved, and neither is underwritten

These three words get used as if they mean the same thing. They do not.

Pre-qualified means someone had a conversation with a loan officer and stated their income. Nobody verified anything. It is worth close to nothing.

Pre-approved usually means a credit pull and some documents, run through an automated system. Better. Still conditional on a real human underwriter agreeing later.

Fully underwritten means a human underwriter has already reviewed the file and signed off, subject only to the property. That buyer is, for practical purposes, carrying cash with an appraisal attached.

The difference between the second and the third is the difference between a buyer who will probably close and a buyer who will definitely close. When I see two offers within one percent of each other and one is underwritten, that is not a close call.

Who the lender is

I know which lenders in this market close on time and which ones apologize on day twenty-eight. So does every experienced listing agent, and it is one of the more useful things we know.

A local lender with a name I recognize, whose loan officer answers the phone, is worth real money against an online lender whose file is being worked by someone in another time zone who has never heard of your street.

I call the lender on the offers I am taking seriously. Most listing agents do not. The call takes four minutes and tells me more than the letter does.

The down payment, and what it means

A large down payment says something about appraisal risk, and that matters more than how strong it looks.

If a buyer is putting thirty percent down and the appraisal comes in low, there is room to absorb it without the loan breaking. At five percent down, a low appraisal is a problem that lands back on your kitchen table as a renegotiation.

So a smaller offer with more cash behind it can be worth more than a larger one with less, and this is the single most common place I disagree with a seller’s first instinct.

The contingencies, and how long they run

California contracts come with default timelines, and everyone treats them as fixed. They are not. Seventeen days for inspection and appraisal is a starting point, not a rule.

An offer that shortens those meaningfully is worth more than the same offer that does not, because every day of contingency is a day you are off the market with the option still sitting on the buyer’s side of the table.

An offer that waives them entirely is worth more again, and also deserves a careful look at whether that buyer understands what they have just done. A waived contingency the buyer regrets is not strength. It is a fight waiting to happen.

What I actually hand you

When offers come in, you get them laid out side by side: price, deposit, loan type, down payment, contingency periods, close date, and what I think of each one. Not a summary of the highest three. All of them, and my read.

Then you decide. It is your house and your money. My job is to make sure the number you are looking at is the number you will actually receive.