Happy Halloween, NREB readers! Welcome to another weekly special edition of NREB Premium. Let’s get into it.

It's Tuesday night, and your seller has two offers.

Offer A is $412,000. The buyer is using an FHA loan with 3.5% down, asks for a $9,000 credit toward closing costs, and wants to close in 45 days.

Offer B is $404,000. Conventional financing, 20% down, no credit, closing in 30 days.

Your seller has already circled A. "It's eight thousand dollars more. Why are we even talking about this?"

Because the number at the top of an offer isn't the number your seller keeps. Put both offers on the same net sheet and the order can flip, and in this case it does. Then comes a second question the net sheet can't answer by itself: what Offer A is really worth if it doesn't appraise at $412,000.

Two assumptions make the arithmetic visible. First, the seller pays listing-side compensation of 2.5% of the price. Compensation is fully negotiable, there is no standard rate, and 2.5% is used here only as an illustration. Second, the seller has already moved out, so each extra day of ownership costs mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance and utilities: $54 a day on this house.

The comparative net is the right line for choosing between offers, because costs that are identical in both drop out. The cash line is what actually reaches your seller's account. Either way, Offer B leaves the seller $2,010 more.

Two details explain most of the flip. The credit comes straight off the top, so A is effectively a $403,000 offer. And because the listing fee in this example is a percentage of the contract price, the seller also pays compensation on the $9,000 that goes back to the buyer: another $225. In places with a transfer tax charged on the price, the same thing happens again.

It would be easy to read that table as "conventional beats FHA." It doesn't say that.

Take the same FHA buyer at $412,000 with no credit and a 30-day close, and Offer A nets $401,700, which is $7,800 more than B. The entire gap in the first table comes from the credit and the calendar. FHA financing is an ordinary part of the market, and treating it as a warning sign only shrinks the pool of buyers your seller is counting on.

The credit isn't unusual either. Redfin reported in September that sellers gave concessions in 44.7% of U.S. home sales in August, the highest share for that month since at least 2020, and in more than 60% of sales in Atlanta, Charlotte and Phoenix. Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed average was 7.24% this week, and many buyers are asking for help with cash at closing. Lenders allow it within limits. FHA lets interested parties, including sellers, contribute up to 6% of the sales price toward the buyer's closing costs. Fannie Mae allows 3%, 6% or 9% on a primary residence, depending on the loan-to-value ratio. A $9,000 credit on a $412,000 purchase is about 2.2% of the price.

So the credit is allowed. The question is what it does to your seller's number, and the table answers that.

The two most recent comparable sales closed at $401,000 and $406,000. Offer B sits within that range. Offer A is $6,000 above the higher one.

That matters because, on a financed purchase, the lender sizes the loan on the lower of the price or the appraised value. Fannie Mae's guidelines say so for the conventional loans it buys, and FHA's do for its loans. If A appraises near the recent sales instead of at $412,000, the gap between the price and the value has to be covered by someone: the buyer, with more cash; your seller, with a lower price; or both.

Here the financing does make a difference. When an FHA buyer signs the contract before receiving the appraised value, the contract generally must include HUD's amendatory clause. VA purchase contracts generally carry a similar escape clause. Both let the buyer cancel without losing earnest money if the appraisal comes in below the price, or go ahead anyway. A conventional buyer usually has an appraisal contingency too, but it's a negotiated term that can be shortened, capped or waived.

Your seller has one more question, and it's the right one: "Can't we take A and have them agree to cover any shortfall?"

Maybe. Whether that promise would hold up in an FHA contract is a separate question, and so is whether a counter could make it unnecessary. Start with what a shortfall would actually cost each side.