The number on the contract is not the number in your account
Sellers anchor on the sale price. Escrow wires you something considerably smaller, and the gap is not one deduction but a stack of them, several of which are negotiable if you know they exist before you sign the listing agreement rather than after. The first time I sold a place, my spreadsheet said one number and the wire said one about $4,000 lighter, because I had typed my mortgage balance from the banking app instead of ordering an actual payoff quote, and I had forgotten that the county would want its share of the year's property taxes settled at the table. Neither surprise was anyone's fault but mine.
So this post is the exercise I should have done back then: one $400,000 sale, every deduction named and priced, down to the exact wire. All figures are stated assumptions you should replace with your own, and this is arithmetic, not financial advice.
Commissions after the 2024 settlement
The largest line has changed shape recently. Following the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement, the old pattern where a seller signed one commission covering both agents by default has been dismantled: buyer-agent compensation can no longer be advertised on most MLS listings, buyers now sign their own agency agreements, and whether a seller contributes to the buyer's agent at all is an explicit negotiation, offer by offer. Commissions were always legally negotiable. Now the paperwork finally behaves that way.
In practice, many sellers still choose to offer buyer-side compensation to keep their listing attractive, so I will model the common case: 2.5% to the listing agent, $10,000, and an agreed 2.5% toward the buyer's agent, another $10,000. That is $20,000 of the sale price, and it is the line most worth a direct conversation: rates vary by market and by agent, flat-fee and discount models exist, and the answer to 'is this negotiable' is now structurally yes on both halves.
Taxes, title, and the government's cut
Transfer taxes are the state or local levy on the transaction itself, and they vary enormously by location, from effectively nothing to well over 1% of the price, with local custom deciding whether buyer or seller pays. I will use 0.5%, $2,000, explicitly as a placeholder. Look up your state and county before trusting any estimate, including this one.
Then the closing machinery: in many states the seller traditionally buys the owner's title policy for the buyer, and pays a share of escrow or settlement fees, $1,500 combined in our example. Some states require an attorney at closing, $800 here. And property taxes get prorated to the day: if you have not yet paid the portion of the year you lived in the house, it comes out of your proceeds, $1,700 in this example. That one is not a cost of selling so much as a bill arriving at a dramatic moment, but it hits the wire all the same.
Concessions: the negotiation inside the negotiation
Almost no deal survives inspection untouched. The buyer's inspector finds the aging water heater and the suspicious flashing, and the buyer asks for either repairs or money. Credits are usually cleaner than contractor work done under deadline, and in our example the seller agrees to a $4,000 credit in lieu of repairs. In a slow market, concessions can also appear earlier as help with the buyer's closing costs, which I described from the other side in closing costs for first-time buyers.
Budget for this line even if you hope it stays at zero. Sellers who mentally spent every dollar of the list price negotiate inspection requests from a position of panic, and panic is expensive.
The payoff: your loan's exit bill
The mortgage payoff is usually the biggest deduction of all and the one most people compute wrong. The payoff amount is not the balance in your banking app: it is the principal, plus interest accrued daily through the payoff date itself, plus any recording or processing fees, occasionally minus an escrow refund that arrives separately weeks later. Order the official payoff quote from your servicer; escrow will anyway, but you want your spreadsheet to match theirs. On a mid-six-figure balance, the daily interest alone explains why the app number and the payoff number disagree by a chunk of a monthly payment. Our example seller owes a payoff of $255,000.
If your remaining balance is small, notice the asymmetry this creates: the percentage costs of selling are charged on the full price, not on your equity. If you were refinancing instead of selling, you would compare this payoff against new-loan costs, math the refinance calculator handles, and the payment you would carry afterwards is a job for the mortgage payment calculator.
The full waterfall, $400,000 to $115,000
Stack it all up. Sale price $400,000. Minus $10,000 listing commission, $10,000 buyer-agent contribution, $2,000 transfer tax, $1,500 title and escrow, $800 attorney, $4,000 inspection credit, and $1,700 of prorated property taxes: that is $30,000 of selling costs, 7.5% of the price. Then the $255,000 payoff. The wire: $115,000.
Two footnotes to that number. First, we quietly spent $2,500 on paint, minor repairs, and cleaning before listing, which never appears on the closing statement but was absolutely a cost of selling, bringing the true total to $32,500. Second, taxes on the gain: US law currently excludes up to $250,000 of gain on a primary residence for single filers and $500,000 for married couples filing jointly, when the ownership and use tests are met, so many primary-home sellers owe nothing, but investors and short-tenure sellers should talk to a professional before spending the wire. Every line above is adjustable to your own deal in the seller net proceeds calculator, which is the five-minute version of this entire post.
Where sellers actually save money
In order of leverage: interview multiple listing agents and negotiate the commission structure openly, since the settlement made every part of it a live question. Decide deliberately what buyer-side compensation to offer rather than defaulting to a number. Get ahead of inspection by fixing the obvious cheap items before listing, because a $150 repair on your schedule routinely beats a $1,000 credit demanded on the buyer's. And read the estimated settlement statement the moment escrow produces it, comparing it to your own waterfall, because the errors that survive to closing are the ones nobody checked at draft stage.
What does not save money: skipping representation entirely without understanding what the listing agent actually does, or anchoring on a fantasy price that adds months of carrying costs. Time is a line item too. Every month unsold is another mortgage payment, and that math belongs in the decision alongside everything above.
Questions people ask
In the worked example, direct selling costs came to 7.5% of a $400,000 sale: commissions, transfer tax, title and escrow fees, an inspection credit, and prorated taxes. Your figure depends heavily on negotiated commissions and your state's transfer taxes, so treat any single percentage as a starting point.
Only if they agree to. Since the 2024 settlement, buyer-agent compensation is negotiated explicitly rather than set by default on the MLS. Many sellers still offer it to keep listings competitive, but the amount, and whether to offer at all, is now a deliberate decision.
The payoff includes interest accrued daily through the payoff date plus any processing or recording fees, which the balance shown in your banking app does not. Order an official payoff quote from your servicer early so your net proceeds estimate matches reality.
Often not on a primary residence: current US law excludes up to $250,000 of gain for single filers and $500,000 for joint filers when ownership and use tests are met. Investment properties and short holding periods are different animals, and that conversation belongs with a tax professional, not a blog post.
