Why would a bank take a lower all cash offer versus a higher offer via conventional lending?
It's because financing can fall through, and then the time between offer and closing is wasted. Often buyers will include preapprovals and other evidence of financing eligibility with their offer for this reason. One other point to consider is that cash offers often include no contingencies. That is, the offer comes in and if the seller signs then the deal is done, without any chance that the buyer backs out. As you can imagine, this is an attractive option in some situations. "Often the counter-party has obligations with respect to timelines as well -- if your buying a house, the seller probably is too, and may have a time-sensitive obligation to close on the deal. I'm that scenario, carrying the second mortgage may be enough to make that deal fall through or result in some other negative impact. Note that ""pre-approval"" means very little, banks can and do pass on deals, even if the buyer has a good payment history. That's especially true when the economy is not so hot -- bankers in 2011 are worried about not losing money... In 2006, they were worried about not making enough!" @OP:  It's all about risk.  With a cash buyer the decision is left up to one person.  With a financed buyer it adds another approval process (the lender).  It's another opportunity for the deal to fall through.  If the bank is the lender then there's even more risk.  They've already taken back the property once and incurred cost and they're setting themselves up to do it all over again.  The discount price can depend on a lot of factors.  Maybe it's a bad area and they need to get rid of it.  Maybe the appraisals for the area are low because of foreclosures and they know it will be hard for a Buyer to get a loan.  Lots of reasons as to what price they'd take. @Shawn:  Every deal has contingencies unless it's a foreclosure bought at auction.  Even if you are getting a steal from the bank in terms of price you're always going to have an inspection period.  If a Buyer doesn't need an inspection then he will just go to an auction and buy a property for an even cheaper price. A bank selling a foreclosed property would negotiate a lower cash deal, I doubt it would be that extreme, 130 vs 100.  An individual seller may give up $10K to save time and get his next home closed as well, but again, I suspect it would be rare to find that large a delta. Also keep in mind that with an all-cash offer, they get their money now and not spread over X-many years, which means they can reinvest it now rather than piece meal across the term of whatever the loan would be. (Presuming the bank would be financing the house themselves.) Additionally, with an all-cash offer, there end to be fewer lawyers at the table, fewer parties total, so the process can generally proceed faster.
If seeing all of your balances in one place matters that much to you, go to a broker that has an online bank like Schwab, ING or ETrade. If you're not comfortable with online banking, I'd suggest dropping the requirement to see everything on one statement/website. All of the major brokers have easy ways to transfer money to and from their accounts. I have accounts at Schwab and TD Ameritrade, which both offer online transfer via ACH transactions for no fee. It's just like paying a credit card online. Investments are a profit center for banks, you pay a higher cost and the guy who signs you up gets points towards his incentive vacation to the Caribbean. IMO this means one of two things: the bank thinks that 3 months from now, the interest rates it plans to offer will be lower than 1%; after 180 days, it will go up again. the bank needs more short-term cash than mid-term cash right now, so it offers you a better deal. In either case, it is unlikely that your 90 day intrest rate will be available 90 days from now, and most likely it will be below 1% unless the bank yet again needs short-term cash from its customers. With those proposed rates, I would go for half in 90 days and half in 270 days. Disclaimer: am no economist, just spent a lot of time the past year fretting over the same kind of questions.  Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong if you think I am. "It sounds like you are isolated and in a small town.  Without the true ability to bank, perhaps you should move. As an alternative you could do some kind of online banking.  Most banks offer the ability to deposit via mobile phone and you could obtain cash by using remote ATMs or writing checks for an amount over your purchase at the grocery store.  How are you paid?  If via direct deposit, that makes mobile banking even easier.   Did your read your premise out loud?  Using Game Stop as a bank is just silly. Are you banned from banks because of not paying child support or some other legal obligation?  If so just ""face the music"".  I know people that are over 40 and owed a relatively small amount of child support and the result of they lost out on order of magnitudes greater income.  It was just a short-sighted move that cost them far more than if they just obeyed the court order. It would be smarter to use a check cashing store, like AmScott, to do your banking.  They will cash checks for a fee, issue money orders, or even allow you to pay some bills directly through them.  Never, ever use them to cash a hot check or for short term financing but using them or Walmart, or the Grocery store is a much better option than Game Stop." Lending isn't profitable when interest rates are this low.  Consider what's involved to offer a savings or checking account.  The bank must maintain branches with tellers.  The bank has to pay rent (or buy and pay property taxes and utilities).  The bank has to pay salaries.  The bank has to maintain cash so as to make change.  And pay for insurance against robbery.  All of that costs money.   At 6% interest, a bank can sort of make money.  Not great money, but it takes in more than it has to pay out.  At 4% interest, which is about where ten year mortgage rates are in Canada, the bank doesn't make enough margin.  They are better off selling the loan and closing their branches than offering free checking accounts.   An additional problem is that banks tend to make money from overdraft fees.  But there's been a move to limit overdraft fees, as they target the most economically vulnerable.  So Canadian banks tend to charge monthly fees instead.  UK banks may also start charging monthly fees if interest rates stay low and other fees get curtailed. A consortium of investment banks go on a road show to their clients to see who's interested at which price in the IPO. The arrange this price through various financial models to determine the market value of the company.  The banks price the offering deliberately low to ensure a pop on the open of trading to send a positive signal to the market. This is their story at least, IPOs mispriced on the low side result in less money for the company making the offering.  I think a better way to perform an IPO is the way google did the theirs; a reverse auction. This is the same way the treasury sells bonds and definitely would put more money in the companies and less in the banks. Unfortunately the banks don't love the idea and you need a lot of clout to get them to change their minds. Yes, truckloads of cash. /s  It's exactly the same as your example, when people say to pay for a car in cash, they don't meany physical bills, but rather the idea that you aren't getting a loan.   In most acquisitions, the buyer will usually pay with their own stock, pay in cash, or a combination of both. I can see that building credit is a valid reason. I would also suggest another scenario, when you have locked up money in long-term savings, with a substantial penalty for early withdrawal. If you suddenly needed money then you might save money by borrowing against the long-term deposit rather than pay the penalties. This is especially true if you needed the money only for a short time. This bit of marketing, like the zero-percent introductory rates some banks offer, is intended to make you more willing to carry a balance, and they're hoping you'll continue that bad habit after the rate goes back up. If you don't think you'll be tempted by the lower rate, yhere's no reason not to accept (unless there's something in the fine print that changes your agreement in other ways; read carefully). But as you say, there's no reason to accept ir either. I'd ignore it.