What does selling actually cost? See your real net proceeds.

Selling is the most expensive thing your home will ever do.

Most homeowners under-estimate selling costs by a wide margin. The 6% agent commission is the headline; the actual all-in cost — including title, transfer taxes, concessions, repairs, and staging — typically runs 8–12% of sale price. On a $525,000 sale, that's $42,000–$63,000 absorbed by the transaction itself.

The right framing: every dollar tied up in selling costs is a dollar of equity that doesn't come home. The down payment you put in years ago, the principal you've paid down through amortization, the appreciation the home has earned — all of it sits in equity until you sell. Then 8–12% of that equity gets stripped out at closing.

The 8–12% breaks down like this

• Agent commissions: 5–6%. Historically split between the listing and buyer agents. The 2024 NAR settlement decoupled this — sellers and buyers can now negotiate their own agent compensation separately. Practical savings depend on local market norms; 5.5% all-in is increasingly common, with discount and flat-fee services going lower.
• Title insurance and closing fees: 0.5–1%. Title insurance, escrow services, attorney where required, recording fees. Some states require seller-paid owner's title insurance; others don't.
• Transfer / excise taxes: 0–2%. Wildly variable by location. $0 in many states. ~$0.50 per $500 in California; up to ~2% in some jurisdictions (NYC, Philadelphia, Washington State). Check your specific state and city.
• Buyer concessions: 0–3%. Credits at closing for inspection-found issues, rate buydowns, or just market-rate negotiation. Higher in slow markets, lower in hot ones, near zero in red-hot bidding wars.
• Pre-sale repairs and staging: 0.5–2%. Touch-up paint, minor plumbing, the deferred maintenance you've been putting off. Staging adds another $1,500–$5,000 for occupied homes; vacant staging runs higher.

Why short holds usually lose money

The pattern shows up clearly: someone buys a home, holds it 18–24 months, then needs to sell because of a job change, family event, or housing-market shift. The math rarely works in their favor.

Consider the round trip on a $425,000 home held 2 years: $12,750 in entry closing costs (3%), then $42,000 in exit costs (8% on the now-$525,000 sale price), totals $54,750 in transaction friction. To net any actual return, the home needs to have appreciated enough to clear that $54,750, plus pay down enough principal to leave equity meaningful. On a 2-year hold, that's typically not enough time — even if the market has been appreciating at a healthy pace.

The 5-year rule of thumb (you usually need at least 5 years to make ownership pencil out vs. renting) is largely about giving the math time to recover from these transaction costs. Short holds aren't categorically wrong, but they need eyes-open awareness that the home is unlikely to be a wealth-building event over that horizon.

What your agent's "Net Sheet" does

This calculator approximates what a real-estate agent calls a Net Sheet (or Seller's Estimated Net) — a line-by-line statement showing your projected proceeds at a given sale price. Most listing agents will provide one before you sign the listing agreement, and they should give you several at different price points so you can see how proceeds change with offer ranges.

Treat this calculator as a first pass: a way to know roughly what to expect before agent conversations begin. Use the agent's Net Sheet as the authoritative version once you have one in hand. The calculator's value is showing you what the structure looks like and giving you a baseline to compare against — which lets you ask better questions and notice if anything in the agent's numbers seems out of range.