As I noted above this is not really true anymore. My agent told me flat out that sellers (read: seller's agents) are not impressed with all-cash offers anymore. As long as you make a no-contingencies offer that's plenty good enough. They might ask if you have a 5-10% reserve just in case the appraisal comes in a bit low but in the three offers we made that never came up, even against other buyers offering all cash.

Getting a mortgage approved was also easier than I expected; when you move into Jumbo territory and have more than 20% cash to put down the bank seems to assume if you were industrious enough, lucky enough, or connected enough to come up with $500k, $1m, or whatever cash then you're probably good for the loan.

They also counted unvested RSUs as assets at a slight discount to the average stock price (I think it was the previous 90 day average?).

> If there's any kind of financing involved, the bank will need to approve the purchase, slowing down the process, which is what a cash offer bypasses.

That's not "already secured" then, is it?

Correct. But the point was that if you're getting financing from an institution, there is no such thing as secured, before they evalute the house and the offer.