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A $450,000 sale with a $280,000 payoff nets $133,500 — 29.7% of the sticker. Know your number before you pick a list price.
Sellers anchor on the sale price; the wire at closing tells the truth. Commission, closing costs, concessions, repair credits, and the mortgage payoff all come off the top — on a $450,000 sale with a $280,000 loan, the net is $133,500, under 30% of the sticker. The 2024 NAR settlement changed the mechanics without changing the math: buyer-agent fees are no longer baked into MLS listings, so they show up as negotiated concessions instead. This calculator runs the complete ledger, including the lines sellers forget — tax proration, HOA estoppel fees, per-diem payoff interest — so the number you plan your next chapter around is the number that actually arrives.
Sellers use it before picking a list price: a $450k sale with a $280k payoff nets $133,500 after commission, closing, and concessions — and the post-2024 buyer-agent concession field keeps the sheet honest in the new commission landscape.
Mechanics, not economics. Before August 2024, listing agreements typically published a buyer-agent commission offer on the MLS; now that field is gone. Buyers sign agreements with their agents specifying the fee, then commonly ask sellers to cover it as a concession in the offer. In practice, most sellers still fund buyer-agent compensation — it just arrives as a negotiated concession line instead of a preset split. What's genuinely different: the negotiation is explicit now, so commission variance between agents has widened and interviewing three agents on price and service pays real money. One caution: refusing buyer-agent compensation entirely can shrink your buyer pool (buyers must fund it from cash they'd rather use for down payment) — in most markets it's still marketing spend, not charity.
The same five, every time. Property tax proration — you owe taxes through the closing day, credited against the buyer's bill. Payoff padding — your lender's payoff quote includes per-diem interest to the payoff date plus reconveyance and wire fees, running a few hundred over your statement balance. HOA estoppel and transfer fees, $200–500, for the association's status letter. Title/escrow splits that vary by local custom — in some counties the seller pays the owner's title policy, in others the buyer does; know your local default before negotiating. And repair credits after inspection — budget 0.5–1% of price unless you pre-inspected. Together these routinely add $2,000–4,000 to a "clean" sheet. This calculator's closing-cost percentage field is where they belong.
Probably not if it's your home — the §121 exclusion shelters $250,000 of gain (single) or $500,000 (married filing jointly) if you owned AND lived in it 2 of the last 5 years. Gain = net sale proceeds minus your adjusted basis (purchase price + improvements + certain closing costs), so the exclusion covers most primary-residence sales even in appreciated markets. The traps: selling before the 2-year mark (partial exclusion exists for job moves, health, unforeseen circumstances), converted rentals (depreciation recapture at 25% on the depreciation you claimed), inherited property (stepped-up basis usually erases the gain — different and better math), and investment property (no §121 at all; a 1031 exchange defers instead). Above the exclusion, long-term rates are 0/15/20% plus the 3.8% net investment income tax at higher incomes. Run the gain BEFORE listing, not after closing.