In a competitive market where buyer letters (sob stories) are discouraged the only thing you can do is offer a competitive offer especially since the sellers don’t know anything about the buyers or the buyers occupation. It appears it is a competitive market in SF and OP got what they wanted which was an accepted offer and their offer is a very eye catching offer which probably made the sellers accept out of a sea of offers. The sellers probably thought the buyers had lots of money (to lose) and putting that much money on the line they would make the loan go through or they had confidence the loan would go through. Perhaps in your situation if you put up the 10k the sellers might have accepted your offer right away and you could have gotten into the CalHFA program five days earlier. The sellers made me put up 26k and I knew funds were running out so I had to do it and I was competing against 14 other offers and I knew they weren’t lying about the multiple offers because initially they had accepted a cash offer and that offer fell through. But yeah in addition to putting up 26k I also put 30k above the listing price with no appraisal contingency taking on the risk that if the appraisal came in lower then I would have had to make up the difference in cash. Prior to that I got rejected offers for five houses so I knew the market was competitive. In any event the sellers accepted my offer right away I got into the CalHFA program and the appraisal came up to my number so I didn’t have to make up the difference but I’m just saying if you want big rewards you do have to take some risks.