>What's weird about it to me is that this is one of the few places in US consumer markets where the seller cares deeply about your method of purchase and where the money came from.
Often times sellers are trying to buy another home and have put a contingency offer (depending on the market) on another home, so they're heavily incentivized to accept an offer that moves quickly so that they can close sooner. A tiny bit more money may not be worth the risk of having multiple deals fall though, hence all-cash offers and traditional loans being more attractive.
With that context, it's no wonder why sellers care so much about the method of buying.
When I was house shopping almost a decade ago during the latest seller's market frenzy, there were several cases where our offer (needing financing) was by far the highest dollar amount, but we lost out to someone offering less in cash and no contingencies. We put offers out on dozens of houses, and always got beaten by an all-cash buyer. Our agent urged us to consider no contingency offers in order to give us a fighting chance against all the all-cash buyers.
Often times sellers are trying to buy another home and have put a contingency offer (depending on the market) on another home, so they're heavily incentivized to accept an offer that moves quickly so that they can close sooner. A tiny bit more money may not be worth the risk of having multiple deals fall though, hence all-cash offers and traditional loans being more attractive.
With that context, it's no wonder why sellers care so much about the method of buying.