1. The estimate
A pricing guide publishes a value for your year, make, model, trim and mileage. It is a statistic about cars like yours, not a statement about your car. Nobody has looked at it, nobody has agreed to buy it, and the number moves when you change the condition you describe. Treat it as the floor of a conversation, not the end of one.
2. The conditional offer
An instant offer from a national buyer is a real number, with conditions attached. It is usually valid for a set number of days and it is subject to an inspection at a location they choose. When the inspection finds something the questionnaire did not, the number changes. That is not a trick. It is the only way a buyer can quote a car it has never seen. The report your Lakeway buyer publishes shows every conditional offer with the date it was checked and the condition it carried, and links to the source so you can see it for yourself.
3. The firm offer
A firm offer is a number a specific buyer commits to, for your specific vehicle, after doing the comparison work. At Lakeway it comes with a written explanation of where it sits against the estimates and the conditional offers, and it includes pickup. It is only as firm as the condition you described. If the vehicle matches, the number holds.
Why the report keeps them apart
If the three were mixed into one list you could not tell which numbers were promises and which were statistics. The report shows the estimates and the conditional offers together, labelled, and shows Lakeway’s firm offer separately. The question to ask of any number is simple: who is committing to pay it, and under what conditions?