How to Make an Offer on a House Without a Realtor in California

The short version

To make an offer on a California house without an agent: call the listing agent for the offer process, price the home with comps, fill in a California purchase agreement with your price, deposit, and contingency days, attach proof of funds or a pre-approval letter, sign every page, and email the packet to the listing agent. It is legal, and you need no license to write your own offer.

That is the whole loop, and it is the same loop the big national guides describe in eight or nine steps. What those guides skip is California: the form everyone uses, its printed defaults, and the deadlines that actually govern your money. Those specifics are below, step by step.

• Call the listing agent for process facts: deadline, disclosures, seller preferences.
• Price the home with recent sold comps and set a walk-away number.
• Pick economic terms: price, deposit, financing, closing date, credits.
• Pick risk terms: which contingencies you keep and how many days each gets.
• Complete the purchase agreement, sign, and initial every page.
• Attach proof of funds and your pre-approval letter.
• Email the packet to the listing agent and ask for written confirmation it was presented.
• Track the response in writing, then negotiate from your walk-away number.

Start with the listing agent call

Before you write, ask how the seller wants offers submitted. You are looking for practical facts: offer deadline or ongoing review process, expected seller response time, preferred closing date, rent-back needs, included items, disclosure availability, escrow preferences, and whether the seller has any terms they care about besides price.

Be clear that you are self-represented and not asking the listing agent to advise you. You are asking for seller-side process information so your offer is easy to present. The self-represented buyer rights guide covers what the seller side does and does not owe you in that conversation.

Keep your numbers out of that first call. You are collecting process facts, not floating a price. The listing agent works for the seller, so anything you reveal can reach the seller. Save your ceiling, your urgency, and your love for the kitchen for never.

Pre-offer call checklist

• Are offers due on a specific date or reviewed as they come in?
• How quickly does the seller usually respond after receiving an offer?
• Are there seller-preferred terms besides price, such as closing date, rent-back, escrow, or included items?
• Are all disclosures and reports available now, or will anything arrive after acceptance?
• If there is no set deadline, can the listing agent notify you if the seller receives competing offers before deciding?
• Will the listing side supply the purchase agreement form for an unrepresented buyer, or are you bringing your own?

Decide the economic terms

Every number below is a fill-in on the purchase agreement itself. In most of California that form is the Residential Purchase Agreement (RPA), 16-plus pages that double as your escrow instructions; it is copyrighted and member-gated, so unrepresented buyers usually offer on a copy supplied through the listing side, prepared by an attorney, or built with an AI platform that uses its own California forms. The RPA explainer for buyers walks through the form paragraph by paragraph.

The form ships with printed defaults, and every one of them is negotiable. Know the defaults before you write, because whatever you leave untouched becomes your contract, and the seller side reads your changes as signal.

• Offer price and escalation strategy, if any. Your comps drive this number, not the list price.
• Earnest money deposit. California norms run about 1% to 3% of the price. The deposit never goes to the seller; the form default is delivery straight to a neutral escrow holder within 3 business days after acceptance, by wire.
• The liquidated damages initials. If both sides initial that clause, the most the seller can presumptively keep on an owner-occupied one-to-four-unit home is 3% of the price under Civil Code 1675, with anything above that returned.
• Down payment and loan type. The default gives you just 3 days after acceptance to deliver verification of your down payment and a completed loan application, so have proof of funds and pre-approval ready before you write.
• Close of escrow. No printed default here; it is a pure fill-in, and 30 to 45 days is the common range for financed purchases.
• Offer expiration. By default your offer is revoked if signed acceptance is not delivered back by 5 p.m. on the third calendar day after you sign. Shorten it to force a decision, or extend it for a slow seller.
• Escrow and title. You and the seller name the escrow holder in the contract, and DRE guidance says the buyer generally makes the selection. Who pays which fee follows county custom, and that is negotiable too.
• Credits, repairs, appliances, fixtures, and personal property you want included. Credits get their own section below.
• Wire safety. Wiring instructions come from the escrow holder, and you confirm them by phone at a number you found yourself, never a number out of an email.

Decide the risk terms

Contingencies are your exits. Each one is a yes-or-no choice plus a number of days, and each survives until you remove it in writing, which the next section covers.

Disclosure duties do not shrink because you showed up without an agent. The seller still owes you the statutory disclosure packet, and if a required disclosure arrives after you sign, California gives you a short window to cancel: 3 days if it was delivered in person, 5 if it came by mail or electronically.

• Inspection contingency and the number of days you need to book inspections and read reports.
• Appraisal contingency and what happens if the value comes in low.
• Loan contingency and your lender's realistic final approval timing.
• Disclosure review timing. Read the disclosure checklist first if any documents will arrive after acceptance.
• Any local inspections, sewer lateral, retrofit, HOA, insurance, or title concerns.
• Whether you will tighten any default days to compete, and which ones your inspector and lender can actually hit.

Know the California contingency defaults

The standard form handles contingencies in a grid, and the printed defaults are friendlier to buyers than most national guides let on. Everything counts in days after acceptance, and every entry is a fill-in you can change. To see your actual dates, drop your acceptance date into the contingency deadline calculator; it even bumps deadlines that land on weekends or holidays the way the form does.

• Loan contingency: 17 days.
• Appraisal contingency: 17 days.
• Investigation of the property, including inspections: 17 days.
• Review of seller documents, the preliminary title report, and HOA documents: 17 days, or 5 days after delivery, whichever comes later.
• Seller's deadline to deliver disclosures: 7 days.
• Buyer's final verification of condition: 5 days before close of escrow.
• Sale of your current home: not a contingency at all unless a sale-of-buyer's-property form (Form COP) is attached.

Deadlines do not remove contingencies

Here is the part that surprises people: hitting a deadline does not end a contingency. California runs on active removal. A contingency stays alive until you sign it away in writing on a contingency removal form (Form CR), so blowing past day 17 makes you late, not unprotected.

The seller cannot cancel on the spot either. The form makes them serve a written Notice to Buyer to Perform first, which gives you at least 2 more days to remove the contingency or act, and only after that can the seller cancel.

Tighten the fill-ins to compete when you can genuinely move fast, but only promise days your inspector and lender can hit. A 10-day investigation contingency you can perform beats a 17-day default you quietly blow through.

And if the deal dies inside your contingencies, the deposit comes back through escrow, not from the seller's goodwill. Releasing it takes mutually signed instructions, and a party who refuses to sign for more than 30 days without a good-faith dispute faces a statutory penalty on top of the funds, plus attorney's fees.

Ask to be notified of competing offers

If the seller has not set a deadline, ask the listing agent to notify you before the seller signs anything else. It is a small ask that costs nothing to make, and it protects you from finding out about a competing offer after the seller has already accepted it. Put the request in writing, in the email that delivers your packet.

Know your presentation rights while you are at it. A listing agent who is a REALTOR must submit offers and counter-offers objectively and as quickly as possible, and must keep presenting offers until closing unless the seller waives that in writing. California courts have treated concealing offers as deceit for decades, and the DRE treats it as a license violation. The duty runs to presentation, not agreement: no law makes a seller respond, counter, or accept.

The purchase agreement adds a paper trail: on written request, the seller's agent must confirm in writing that your offer was presented to the seller. Worried about being brushed off for arriving without an agent? Contacting the listing agent directly covers the approach, and who writes the offer when there is no buyer's agent covers what the listing side can and cannot help with.

Ask for a seller credit in the offer itself

With no buyer's agent, the seller is not funding a buyer-side commission on your deal. That does not mean you pocket a commission; nobody hands you a check. It means there is negotiating room, and you capture it as a lower price or as a seller credit toward your closing costs.

The credit has a specific home in the offer: the seller credit line in the terms grid, paragraph 3G(1) on the standard form, written as a dollar amount or a percentage of the price. Size it to your loan before you write. Conventional financing allows seller contributions of 3%, 6%, or 9% depending on your down payment, FHA allows up to 6%, and VA caps concessions at 4% with normal closing costs not counting against that cap.

One trap in the fine print: credits are disclosed to your lender, and if the lender allows less than the contract says, the credit shrinks to the lender's number with no automatic price cut to make up the difference. The commission credit guide covers sizing and phrasing the ask.

Package the offer so it can be presented quickly

A self-represented offer should be easy to understand and easy to compare. If the seller cares about a specific closing date, clean proof of funds, a rent-back, or fewer loose ends, reflect that clearly in the packet instead of burying it in the email.

Do not make the offer vague to preserve flexibility. Put the actual terms, deadlines, contingencies, and attached proof in the documents so the seller side can present it cleanly. Listing agents and sellers should not have to hunt for your signature, pre-approval, or terms. A complete packet reduces friction, and it shows that self-represented does not mean disorganized.

• The signed purchase agreement with every blank resolved and every page initialed; the standard form asks the buyer to acknowledge every page.
• Proof of funds for the deposit and down payment, plus a pre-approval letter if you are financing.
• Anything the seller side asked for on the call: preferred closing date, rent-back terms, included items.
• A short cover email that summarizes the deal, covered next.

Use a short professional email

The offer lives in the signed attachments. The email is a table of contents, short enough that the listing agent can forward it to the seller without editing.

Name the attachments so they sort cleanly, and keep the whole conversation in one thread. The paper trail you start with this email is the one you will lean on through closing.

• Subject: Offer for [property address] - [your name].
• Opening: Attached is my offer package for [property address]. I am a self-represented buyer.
• Body: Summarize price, financing or cash, deposit, closing date, major contingencies, and attached proof.
• Close: Ask them to confirm receipt and to confirm in writing that the offer will be presented to the seller, and ask about expected response timing.

After you send

Track confirmation of receipt, seller response timing, counters, acceptance, rejection, and follow-up messages. If a counter arrives, compare it to your walk-away price and risk terms before you respond. The pillar buyer guide covers what comes next once you are under contract.

One rule keeps you sane while you wait: nothing binds anyone until it is in writing and signed. California's statute of frauds, Civil Code 1624, makes contracts for the sale of real property invalid otherwise. A verbal offer commits no one, a verbal yes from the seller is not acceptance, and the seller can still sign a different buyer's offer right up until signed acceptance is delivered back to you. The same rule protects you: your offer expires on its own at the deadline you set, and nobody can hold you to terms you never signed.

Do not let speed erase review. A counter is still a binding transaction document once signed and accepted.

How Ohvii helps

Ohvii is built for exactly this checklist. Paste the listing link and the AI imports the listing and lines up nearby sold comps to price against; set your price, deposit, credits, and contingency days, and sign a complete packet built on Ohvii's own California forms, with co-buyers and entity buyers handled in the same flow. You send the first offer from your own inbox with a tracking address on CC, replies and likely counters get flagged, and when the seller counters you can accept, counter back with a fresh signed form, or ask the assistant to walk through what changed. Follow-ups go out only after you approve them (how it works). It is not your agent, attorney, or negotiator; the terms and the decisions stay yours.

Questions buyers ask