Do you underwrite the buyer-side fee as your cost, or as a seller credit you expect to get?

Question

I've been rebuilding my acquisition template since the August 2024 rule changes and I keep hitting the same fork on one line.

Option one: put the buyer-agent fee in as a real cash cost to me at close, say 2.4 percent of purchase price, and treat anything the seller contributes as a refund I didn't count on. That's conservative and it never surprises me, but it makes every deal look worse than it will probably close at, and on a thin spread it will kill deals that would actually pencil.

Option two: assume the seller covers it, the way it worked before the settlement and the way it still mostly works in practice. Redfin's numbers say average buyer-side commissions barely moved after the rules took effect, near 2.4 percent in early 2025, and sellers keep paying because listings that don't get skipped. If that's the real world, then loading it as my cost is just padding my model with a number that almost never lands.

The thing that pushes me toward option one is that it's genuinely negotiable now and there's no MLS field telling me the answer before I write. I find out when someone asks. On two of my last four the listing side confirmed the full ask within a day. On one they came back at 1.5 and I ate the difference because my representation agreement said 2.5.

Where do you actually put it in the model?

paulgrant17 · Accepted Answer

I'd run it as your cost and carry the seller contribution as a separate visible line that starts at zero.

The reason isn't caution for its own sake. It's that the two assumptions change different things. Whether the seller pays it changes your cash needed at close. Whether you pay it changes your basis and your all-in. If you bury both in one netted number you lose the ability to see which one broke when a deal goes sideways.

The other reason to keep them separate is the workaround people use when the seller won't credit enough. You raise the offer price to fund the credit. That works right up to the point the appraisal doesn't support the higher number, and then you're covering the gap in cash anyway. If your model already has the fee sitting in the cash column, that scenario is one cell change instead of a rebuild.

So my template has purchase price, buyer-agent fee at the contracted rate as cash, seller contribution as a negative that I only fill in after I have it confirmed in writing from the listing side. Sellers in most markets still do cover it, which is exactly why the zero default doesn't cost me deals often. When it does hold me back, that's a deal where the funding was uncertain and I wanted to see that.

derekj19 · Answer

What do agents say when you ask them to write it as a dollar cap instead of a percent? I've asked three people on the service side and got three different answers, which makes me think it's still being figured out desk by desk.

karen_whitfield · Answer

On land I've never once assumed a seller was paying my side. Small rural sellers, often unlisted or listed by someone who does four deals a year, and there's no split culture at all. I budget the full fee as cash out of my pocket every time and I've been pleasantly surprised maybe twice in a decade. Canton, if your pipeline is improved dirt and standard resale that math will look different than mine.

chriswalton8 · Answer

The part that bites is the mechanism, not the average. When the seller covers your agent it usually comes through as a credit at closing, and lenders cap seller-paid credits by loan type and occupancy. So there are deals where the seller says yes and the credit still doesn't fully fit inside the cap, and the remainder lands on you in cash. Confirm the current cap in writing with your lender for the specific product, they don't all treat it the same.

stephen_ok9 · Answer

Wren's split is what I've landed on too, mostly because the people reviewing my numbers ask where the fee is and "netted into price" is a bad answer.

dpatel_re · Answer

It shows up in cash at close. That's the only place it matters to me, so it goes in the cash column at the contracted rate and the seller contribution offsets it or doesn't. My representation agreement obligates me to my agent regardless of what the other side does, and that's the exposure I'm modeling.

laurenkim53 · Answer

Different problem down at my price points. 2.4 percent of a 140k house is $3,360 and most decent agents in these counties won't take that on, so the agreements I see have a minimum, $4,500 or $5,000. On those the percentage question is basically irrelevant, it's a fixed number and it's a bigger share of the deal than any of you are modeling.

diane_kowalski · Answer

Do you ask the listing agent yourself or does your agent? I've had better luck asking directly because the answer comes back plainer, though on one it clearly annoyed the listing side that I went around.

mikeoconnell7 · Answer

Most listing agents I deal with now will confirm compensation in an email or on their own broker site within a day of being asked, which is the workaround the Fed note mentioned when it said the info found ways out of the MLS. It isn't published, it's just one question away. That's why the averages didn't move much.

brandonlee36 · Answer

Deal by deal for me, but I'll admit that's partly because I can absorb it if I guess wrong. Hollow's point is the one that would change my template, a floor fee at a low purchase price wrecks the percentage framing entirely.

Do you underwrite the buyer-side fee as your cost, or as a seller credit you expect to get?

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