Part of finishing the home buying process is making a deal to the sellers of the house on how much you are willing to pay for the property. Your offer will be looked over by the seller. The seller will decide whether it's amenable to him/her, whether he/she would like to propose some changes and make a counter-offer, or in some cases, he/she can just reject your offer because it doesn't seem a fair offer for the property that they are selling.

How do you determine how much you should offer?

The list price of a house is only a guideline for you when you are determining what amount to offer the owners. Ideally, you should learn how to determine the value of the house based on several things in order for you to make a fair and informed offer to the owners. One of the first things you should do is to research the price of similar homes in the same location. For example, if you want to buy Encinitas real estate in a particular community, then find out what Encinitas homes for sale costs. Ideally, this should be within the same area or community, and with houses that have roughly the same specifications in terms of size and structure.

The appearance of a house would also play a major part in how much it would be worth. A house that appears run-down and poorly maintained will not fetch an attractive price and so, on your part, it is quite unreasonable to be required to pay more. A house that would require a lot of renovations would really cost you a lot of money in the future so you have to take this into consideration and factor this into the kind of budget you will have after mortgages and fees.

It's also important to be familiar with the condition of the local real estate market when making an offer. Do your research and see if the local real estate market in your target area is up (lots of demands for houses from buyers) to determine if the price of the house is reasonable.

Another consideration is whether or not the offer you will make will fit your budget. The goal is to find something realistic and workable for you without being unreasonable to the seller.

When writing an offer down, it's best to include the contingencies of the sale in order to be transparent with the seller. Some states don't really require you to include anything else other than the intention to buy the property for the amount that you are proposing. However, some states have more stringent measures regarding this. You can add contingencies including the fact that you will only buy the house if a certain amount of loan is approved for you, or if the owner will agree to shouldering the repair of some parts of the house that needs repairing.

You can also include a positive home inspection result to be part of the contingency. It's all really up to you because you'll be the one paying for the home in the first place.

Learning what you should include in your offer is very important because you'll need to do something to look after your own interests as well. This would also be beneficial to the seller because anybody can benefit from a good level of transparency in a deal.