A buyer can easily outbid an all cash offer.
In fact, if you offer 100% over asking price you’re almost guaranteed to win ;)
There are situations where it definitely makes sense, like if you're pretty secure without the bonus, you're friendly with the people deciding the bonuses, the base salary is high enough, there is some guaranteed minimum bonus, and you don't burn out trying to attain/maximize it.
Ultimately, you can't get away from the fact that some financial health is at the whim of persons within the company and frankly they just aren't going to care as much about it as you do. It's very much a gamble instead of a solid investment.
Making a lot of money is great until it doesn't come for whatever reason.
It should go without saying that you shouldn't take out a mortgage where you can't afford the regular payments out of your regular income. Banks are very unlikely to grant you such a loan anyway.
As someone on the other side of the table who has to make comp decisions, I honestly want to pay the team as much as we can afford while being careful to maintain the financial health of the company. I really do, the more I pay people the more likely they are to feel rewarded and go the extra mile and not quit.
But that can be scary, since you can’t lower comp as a manager, that’s not really possible. If you’re overconfident you can end up in a genuine crisis.
So I pay as much as I know I can afford, and then as a period closes I can look back and pay the extra that I can now be sure I can afford since the results are in.
It’s a mechanism to help me pay the maximum the business can afford. It’s in place to help the team make the most money possible.
Clearly not every situation will be like this. Clearly somehere there’s someone dangling bonuses as a cynical way to exploit people.
But it’s unfair to dismiss the concept out of hand. Especially in volatile lines of business or very fast growing companies.
Just a good way to proverbially crack the whip.