A seller’s net sheet is an itemized estimate of the cash you’ll actually walk away with after a home sale, calculated by subtracting your mortgage payoff, agent commissions, transfer taxes, title and escrow fees, prorated property taxes, and any buyer concessions from the agreed sale price. The number almost always comes in lower than sellers expect, and the gap between what the house sold for and what gets deposited in your account is where most seller frustration lives. Running the sheet before you list, not at the closing table, is the entire point.
What You Need Before the Numbers Mean Anything
The sheet is only as accurate as the inputs. Start with your mortgage payoff balance, which is not the same as your current loan balance. A payoff figure includes accrued interest through the anticipated closing date plus any outstanding fees your servicer has added. Request a formal payoff statement from your lender; federal rules require them to provide it in a reasonable timeframe after your written request. The statement shows a daily interest charge so the title company can calculate the exact amount owed on whatever day closing lands.
If you have a home equity line of credit, a second mortgage, or any other lien against the property, those balances get paid off at closing too and come straight off the top. Get current payoff figures for each. Some older loans carry prepayment penalties, though most mortgages originated after 2014 are qualified mortgages where prepayment penalties are restricted under federal lending rules.
You also need your estimated closing date, recent property tax information, HOA dues, and the proposed sale price. Even a small shift in contract price cascades through every percentage-based fee on the sheet, so if you’re still choosing a list price, run the numbers at a few different points.
Agent Commissions Are Usually the Biggest Line
The national average total commission currently sits around 5 to 6 percent of the sale price, though how that commission splits has changed. Before 2024, sellers almost always paid both their listing agent and the buyer’s agent through a combined commission baked into the MLS listing. That model ended with the NAR settlement that took effect in August 2024, which prohibited offers of compensation from appearing in the MLS and required buyers to sign written agreements with their agents specifying compensation.
In practice, many sellers still agree to contribute toward the buyer’s agent fee as a negotiation tool, but it isn’t automatic. Your listing agreement spells out what you owe your own agent; any contribution to the buyer’s side is negotiated separately in the purchase contract. On a $400,000 sale, a 5.5 percent total commission comes to $22,000. If you’ve negotiated a 2.5 percent listing-side commission and offered nothing to the buyer’s agent, that drops to $10,000. The line has more flexibility than it used to, and the sheet should reflect what you’ve actually agreed to rather than an assumed 6 percent.
Transfer Taxes
Roughly 36 states impose some form of real estate transfer tax when property changes hands. These go by different names depending on where you live: deed tax, documentary stamp tax, real estate excise tax, or conveyance tax. Rates range widely, from as low as 0.01 percent of the sale price in some states to 2 percent or more in others. On a $400,000 sale, that spread means anywhere from $40 to $8,000 just in transfer taxes.
Who pays also varies by jurisdiction and local custom. In some areas the seller pays the full amount; in others it is split, or the buyer picks it up. Your listing agent or title company will know the local convention, but make sure the sheet reflects it accurately instead of assuming.
Title Insurance, Escrow, and Recording Fees
Title costs cover the work of searching public records to confirm you can legally transfer clear ownership. A title search verifies that no surprise liens, judgments, or ownership disputes exist. The owner’s title insurance policy protects the buyer against defects the search might have missed. Whether the seller or buyer pays for the owner’s policy depends entirely on local custom. Policies generally cost between 0.5 and 1 percent of the purchase price.
Escrow fees cover the neutral third party that holds funds and documents during the transaction and distributes everything at closing. These typically range from $500 to $2,000 depending on sale price and complexity. Recording fees charged by the county to update the deed in public records usually run between $50 and $200. Wire transfer fees, notary charges, and courier costs add another $100 to $300 in small but real deductions.
Property Tax and HOA Prorations
Prorations divide shared costs between you and the buyer based on how many days each of you owned the property during a given billing period. Property taxes are the biggest proration item. In jurisdictions that collect taxes in arrears, you’ve been living in the home without yet paying taxes for that period. At closing, the title company calculates a daily tax rate and debits your proceeds for every day from the start of the tax period through the closing date. The buyer picks up the tab from closing day forward.
Where taxes are paid in advance, the math reverses: you’ve already paid for days you won’t own the property, so the buyer reimburses you at closing. Either way, the calculation depends on the local government’s fiscal year, the most recent tax bill, and the exact closing date. HOA dues follow the same logic. Prepaid quarterly dues earn you a credit for the unused portion; unpaid dues or a special assessment come off your proceeds.
Buyer Concessions and Repair Credits
Buyers frequently ask sellers to cover a portion of their closing costs or to credit them for repairs discovered during the home inspection. These concessions come directly off your net proceeds and are one of the harder items to estimate before you’re actually under contract.
Lender rules cap how much a seller can contribute toward a buyer’s closing costs. For conventional loans backed by Fannie Mae, the limit depends on the buyer’s down payment: 3 percent of the sale price if the buyer puts down less than 10 percent, 6 percent for down payments between 10 and 25 percent, and 9 percent for down payments of 25 percent or more.1Fannie Mae Selling Guide. Interested Party Contributions (IPCs) For FHA loans, sellers can contribute up to 6 percent of the sale price toward the buyer’s closing costs, including prepaid items and discount points.2U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. What Costs Can a Seller or Other Interested Party Pay on Behalf of the Borrower Concessions that exceed these caps get deducted from the sale price for appraisal purposes.
Repair credits work differently. After the inspection, a buyer might ask for $5,000 off the price or a $5,000 credit at closing to handle a roof issue or a plumbing problem. There’s no hard federal cap on repair credits the way there is on closing-cost concessions, but the credit still reduces what you pocket. Until you have a signed purchase agreement, the best you can do is leave a placeholder or run scenarios at different concession levels.
Capital Gains Tax Isn’t on the Sheet, but It’s Coming
The sheet captures what gets subtracted at the closing table. A separate tax bill may arrive later. If your home has appreciated significantly, you could owe federal capital gains tax on the profit, calculated as the sale price minus your adjusted cost basis (what you paid, plus qualifying improvements, minus any depreciation).
Most homeowners can exclude a large chunk. Single filers can exclude up to $250,000 in profit; married couples filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000, as long as you owned and lived in the home as your primary residence for at least two of the five years before the sale. You can’t have claimed the exclusion on another home sale within the prior two years. A surviving spouse who sells within two years of their spouse’s death can still use the full $500,000 exclusion even when filing as a single filer.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 121 – Exclusion of Gain From Sale of Principal Residence
Profit above the exclusion is taxed as a long-term capital gain if you owned the home for more than a year. For 2026, the federal rates are 0 percent for lower incomes, 15 percent for most filers, and 20 percent for taxable income above $545,500 (single) or $613,700 (married filing jointly).4Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 701, Sale of Your Home High earners face an additional 3.8 percent net investment income tax on the portion of the gain that exceeds the exclusion, once modified adjusted gross income tops $200,000 for single filers or $250,000 for joint filers.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1411 – Imposition of Tax Gain that qualifies for the Section 121 exclusion is not subject to this additional tax.6Internal Revenue Service. Net Investment Income Tax If your gain might exceed the exclusion, factor an estimate into your planning so the April bill isn’t a surprise.
FIRPTA Withholding If You’re a Foreign Seller
If you’re a foreign national selling U.S. real property, the buyer is required to withhold 15 percent of the gross sale price and remit it to the IRS under the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act.7Internal Revenue Service. FIRPTA Withholding On a $400,000 sale, that’s $60,000 held back at closing. You can file a U.S. tax return to claim a refund if your actual tax liability is lower, but the cash is gone until the IRS processes the return.
There’s an exemption: if the buyer is an individual acquiring the property as a personal residence and the sale price is $300,000 or less, no withholding is required.8Internal Revenue Service. Exceptions From FIRPTA Withholding For sales above that threshold, you can apply to the IRS for a withholding certificate to reduce the amount, but the application takes time and must be filed before closing. Build FIRPTA withholding into your net sheet from the start.
Where to Get One
You don’t have to build it from scratch. Most listing agents prepare a net sheet during the initial consultation and update it every time a new offer comes in. Title companies and escrow officers also generate them using software that pulls local tax rates, recording fees, and title premiums automatically. If you want a rough estimate before engaging an agent, many title companies offer free online calculators where you enter the sale price, mortgage balance, and expected closing date to get an instant projection.
The DIY version works in a pinch, but the professional version catches line items you might miss, especially jurisdiction-specific fees that vary by county. A good agent will run the sheet at multiple price points so you can see exactly how each offer translates into cash. That comparison is where the sheet earns its keep: a higher offer with a large seller-concession request can net you less than a slightly lower offer with no concessions.
Checking the Net Sheet Against the Closing Disclosure
A net sheet is an estimate. The closing disclosure is the legally binding final accounting. Under federal lending rules, the settlement agent prepares a separate closing disclosure for the seller that itemizes every charge, credit, and proration.9Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Content of Disclosures for Certain Mortgage Transactions – 1026.38 You should receive this document before you sit down to sign.
Compare it line by line against your most recent net sheet. The numbers should be close, but small shifts happen: the closing date may have moved and changed your proration amounts, a recording fee may differ from the estimate, or a last-minute repair credit may have been added. If anything is off by more than a few hundred dollars and nobody can explain why, push back before signing. This is genuinely your last chance to catch errors, and title companies do make them. Once the deed records and funds disburse, fixing an overcharge becomes dramatically harder.