On a seller net sheet, the commission is often the smallest line, not the biggest

A proper seller net sheet, built without the round numbers a marketing sheet tends to use, tells a different story than most sellers expect. Take a sale price assumption of 412,000 on a 1970s ranch in a mid-size metro. What comes out before the seller sees a dollar: listing commission at 2.5 percent, 10,300; buyer-agent compensation, seller-paid, at 2.5 percent, another 10,300; transfer tax, which varies significantly by state and should always be confirmed locally, roughly 1,650 in a jurisdiction where it is charged to the seller; title and settlement fees around 1,400; payoff on the existing loan, say 188,000; pro-rated property tax near 2,900 depending on close date; a seller concession assumption of 6,000, reasonable if several recent comparable sales in the subdivision carried one; and a repair plug of roughly 5,000 for inspection response. That leaves around 186,450 against a gross-of-loan equity figure the seller may have been imagining closer to 206,000. The part worth dwelling on is that commission gets argued over constantly while concessions and repairs, often a larger combined line, get far less scrutiny. A listing agent who negotiates the inspection response well is arguably worth more than one who shaves half a point off the fee, if that gap between agents is real and not just intuitive. Before finalizing any net sheet, pulling concession data on every closed sale in the subdivision over the trailing 18 months, not just a handful, gives a far more defensible number than a plug based on a small sample skewed toward one season.