Seller Net Sheet (2026): Every Line, and a Working Calculator

Search for a seller net sheet and you get calculators. Page one is almost entirely title companies, each built for a single state. None explains what belongs on the sheet, where the numbers come from, or which lines get left off. That is the part that costs you a listing.

This is the working version: every line, who customarily pays it, how variable it is, and a calculator you can use on a real file. If you are weighing real estate coaching, knowing this cold is the cheapest credibility you will buy. A seller who understands their own number stops hesitating.

What a net sheet is, and the three documents it is not

Start with the useful negative. I could find no statute defining a seller net sheet, prescribing its contents, or restricting who may prepare one, and the definitions online are mostly marketing copy from companies selling calculators. Not a reason to avoid one. A reason to be precise about what you hand over.

A net sheet is your good faith estimate of what the seller walks away with, prepared before there is a contract, from numbers that are mostly quotes and partly assumptions. Three real documents get confused with it.

Closing Disclosure requirements at 12 CFR sections 1026.19(f) and 1026.38; ALTA's own description of its settlement statement forms. Read 16 September 2026.

Every line that sits between price and proceeds

The whole stack. Variability is the column most articles skip and the one telling you where to stop guessing.

Four go missing most often: the association packet, an outstanding special assessment, the payoff fees, and whichever direction the tax proration runs. Each is small enough to feel ignorable and large enough to be why the seller calls you the day before closing.

Your payoff is not your balance

The largest deduction on almost every sheet, and the one most often wrong. The seller reads the balance off their app and you write it down. That is not what the lender will demand.

A payoff statement is the lender's binding figure through a stated date. It contains:

• Unpaid principal balance. The number on the app.
• Interest accrued to the payoff date. Residential mortgages are paid in arrears, so interest runs daily from the last paid instalment. Per diem is principal times note rate divided by 365, though some notes use 360.
• A payoff statement or demand fee, and a wire fee. Servicers publish these, state by state. One national servicer's Florida schedule, revised July 2025, shows up to $30 for the payoff quote and up to $25 for the wire. Pull your servicer's own schedule.
• The release recording fee. Satisfying the deed of trust has to be recorded, and the clerk charges for it.
• Anything the servicer has capitalised. Escrow shortage, force placed insurance, late charges.

Order the payoff. Under Regulation Z a servicer must provide an accurate payoff statement within a reasonable time and no more than seven business days after a written request, with exceptions including bankruptcy and foreclosure. Watch the good through date: a payoff that expires before your closing is not a payoff.

12 CFR section 1026.36(c)(3); Fairfax Circuit Court land records fee schedule CCR A-50 effective 1 July 2026 for the release recording cost; a national servicer's published fee schedule revised July 2025. Read 16 September 2026.

The HELOC has to be closed, not zeroed

A second deed of trust pays off like a first. A home equity line does not. Paid only to zero, the lender need not release it and the seller can draw again before recording, so settlement agents require a written close out request alongside the demand. Standard practice rather than statute, and the sort of thing that delays a closing a week when nobody asks early.

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Where buyer-broker compensation goes now

The practice changes took effect on 17 August 2024. What agents still get wrong is not the rule but the consequence of how you write the line.

What actually changed, and what did not

NAR Summary of 2024 MLS Changes; NAR settlement FAQs; NAR guidance on compensation, commission and concessions dated 13 August 2024; NAR reporting on the Eighth Circuit decision of 19 August 2026. Read 16 September 2026. Rehearing petitions filed at the start of September 2026 were still undecided on 16 September 2026, and several related cases remain stayed until the appellate mandate issues. The practice changes are settled; the litigation is not over.

Two requirements matter to your sheet. Offers of compensation cannot be published on an MLS, and you need the seller's prior approval before one is made or paid. Both point the same way: the number belongs on its own line, agreed with your seller.

The part almost nobody tells agents

Seller funded buyer-broker compensation can be structured two ways. The seller nets the same either way. The buyer's loan does not.

FHA guidance of April 2024 as reported by a state Realtor association; NAR Washington Report on the FHFA confirmation of GSE guidance, 15 April 2024; Fannie Mae Selling Guide B3-4.1-02, updated 7 May 2025. Read 16 September 2026. The agency carve out is conditioned on the payment being customary by local convention, and after two years of negotiated fees that condition is a live question. Confirm the current position with the buyer's lender rather than relying on this paragraph.

Give buyer-broker compensation its own line, label it negotiated rather than fixed, and note which instrument you are modelling. When the objection comes, work from the commission objection handlers. What you should not do is print 5 percent on one line and let the seller assume the split is settled.

Build the sheet

Jurisdiction comes first because it sets the one rate this can prefill. Every field with no defensible national figure loads empty, brokerage included, because a prefilled commission is the assumption this article argues against.

Switch from Northern Virginia to DC on the same $750,000 and the transfer tax goes from $2,250 to $10,875. That is why a national net sheet calculator cannot be trusted without knowing where the house is, and why this one refuses to invent lines it cannot know.

Transfer taxes, and why the number is local

The line that makes national calculators useless. Rate, payer and sometimes structure change at a state line and occasionally a county line. The four I am licensed in, from statute.

Va. Code sections 58.1-802, 58.1-802.3, 58.1-802.4; D.C. Code section 47-903; Md. Tax-Property section 13-203; W.Va. Code section 11-22-2. All read 16 September 2026. Statutory payer is the default rather than a prohibition: Virginia lets the parties arrange for the grantee to pay, West Virginia shifts the tax to a grantee who accepts the deed unpaid, and DC makes the transferee jointly liable on the transferor's default. The owner's policy conventions come from underwriter practice guides and are convention, not law.

Three things in that table cost real money

• Northern Virginia sellers pay triple. On a $750,000 sale, $2,250 against $750 in Richmond. Same state, three times the tax.
• The DC cliff is not marginal. At $400,000 the rate applies to the entire amount, not the part above the threshold. A $399,000 sale carries about $4,389 of seller transfer tax. A $400,000 sale carries $5,800. That last thousand dollars of price costs your seller about $1,411.
• Maryland stops being negotiable for a first time buyer. On improved residential property bought by a qualifying Maryland first time homebuyer who will occupy it, the state rate halves to 0.25 percent and the whole of it moves to the seller by statute. The seller's cost is 0.25 percent either way, so the state tax is a wash. What changes is that the split is no longer yours to negotiate.

And two states that break the pattern completely

Florida charges documentary stamps at 70 cents per $100, Miami-Dade charges a different rate, and who pays the owner's policy varies by county within the state. If one state cannot agree with itself, a national average is fiction.

California looks cheap and is not. The county base is $1.10 per $1,000. Then the cities pile on: Los Angeles under Measure ULA reaches 4.45 percent between $5.3 million and $10.6 million and 5.95 percent above, and San Francisco tops out at 6 percent above $25 million. A California seller's transfer tax can be fifty times higher one block across a city line.

Fla. Stat. section 201.02; California City Finance documentary and property transfer tax rates effective 1 December 2025. Read 16 September 2026.

The association lines agents forget

Two seller costs, routinely absent until the settlement agent raises them.

The resale packet

In Virginia the resale certificate is the seller's cost by statute, and the Common Interest Community Board caps what the association may charge. Maryland caps its resale package fee too. DC allocates neither. These adjust, so quote the current figure.

Va. Code section 55.1-2316; the Virginia Common Interest Community Board publishes the maximum allowable fees separately. Read 16 September 2026. No dollar figure here, because the schedule adjusts and I could not confirm the current one.

Va. Code section 55.1-1966 (Condominium Act) and section 55.1-1833 (Property Owners' Association Act), read 16 September 2026.

Prorations run in both directions

The most misunderstood line on the sheet, and the one where a wrong sign moves the number twice as far as a missing line would. Direction depends on the billing cycle, not on any general rule.

One sheet can carry a tax proration and a dues proration with opposite signs. Virginia runs a calendar tax year, with Fairfax instalments on 28 July and 5 December. Maryland runs a fiscal year from 1 July. Florida bills a year in arrears, the opposite direction from an advance payment market.

Fairfax County Tax Administration billing dates; underwriter practice guides for Virginia, West Virginia and Florida tax cycles. Read 16 September 2026. The Maryland advance payment pattern is practitioner convention; I could not reach a state level source confirming it.

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Sellers who do not live in the state

Binary. Either it applies and it is large, or it does not apply. Watch the base, because the three regimes do not share one. FIRPTA takes 15 percent of the amount realised, which is essentially the price. Maryland and West Virginia withhold on the total payment, meaning the price less the secured debt paid off at settlement and less the seller's disclosed selling expenses. Put the wrong base under the rate and you will be out by tens of thousands.

Maryland Form MW506NRS and the West Virginia nonresident withholding guidance, both of which compute total payment net of secured debt and disclosed selling expenses; the FIRPTA withholding rules and the residence exception. Read 16 September 2026. The Virginia and DC entries are negative findings from searching, not a confirmed absence.

Nine mistakes that show up on real net sheets

Which is most common is practitioner judgement, not a researched finding. That each is an error is not.

• Using the balance instead of the payoff. Always wrong in the direction that disappoints the seller.
• Leaving out per diem interest. Even agents who order the payoff forget that a later closing date moves it.
• Forgetting the association resale packet. A seller cost by statute in several states, invisible until it is ordered.
• Assuming prorations run one way. The sign follows the billing cycle, not the state.
• Treating a concession as a price reduction. The most consequential item here, and the one below.
• Omitting unpaid assessments. They are a lien, collected at the table whether or not your sheet anticipated them.
• Assuming the buyer pays the owner's policy. The convention in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia. Not reliable in Florida, where it varies by county. I could not verify the DC custom.
• Giving one number instead of a band. Six lines are genuinely unknowable at listing. A point estimate claims precision the inputs do not have.
• Not dating it. Every input has its own expiry, and an undated sheet cannot be defended later.

Why the concession is not a price reduction

A $20,000 concession and a $20,000 price cut take the same money out of the seller's proceeds. They are not the same transaction, in four ways.

• The recorded price differs, so the comp your next seller relies on differs.
• Transfer tax is computed on consideration, so the concession preserves the higher tax base while the price cut lowers it. Near the DC line that is decisive.
• The concession is capped by the buyer's loan programme and the price cut is not. Fannie Mae allows 9 percent at or below 75 percent loan to value, 6 percent from there to 90 percent, and 3 percent above 90 percent on a principal residence. FHA caps interested party contributions at 6 percent of the sales price on a forward mortgage.
• Appraisers must report and adjust for concessions, and Fannie Mae says a strict dollar for dollar deduction is not appropriate.

Fannie Mae Selling Guide B3-4.1-02 on interested party contributions, updated 7 May 2025, and B4-1.3-09 on adjustments to comparable sales, updated 4 June 2025; HUD Handbook 4000.1 part II.A.4.d for the FHA forward mortgage limit. Read 16 September 2026.

A tenth is less an error than a framing gap. Staging, the pre listing inspection and pre listing repairs never reach a settlement statement, because they were paid months earlier. A sheet showing only settlement costs and calling the bottom line net overstates what the seller made.

How to present it without creating a problem

I went looking for the ethics rule on net sheets. There is not one. I searched the 2026 Code of Ethics for estimate, closing costs, net and proceeds, and no Article or Standard of Practice uses any of them. Worth saying plainly.

Four provisions do reach it.

NAR 2026 Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, read 16 September 2026.

Give a band, and build it honestly

Vary only the lines that are genuinely unknown. The optimistic bound is no concession, no repair credit, compensation at the low end of what you see locally, and the earliest realistic closing. The conservative bound is a concession at the local norm, a repair allowance, compensation at the high end, and thirty more days of per diem.

Carry a contingency if you want one, but label it. An unlabelled cushion is a small misrepresentation: the seller cannot see it or challenge it. And it should cover what is structurally unknowable, not what you could have looked up. Padding the transfer tax because you did not check the rate is an error with a cushion on top. If the conversation that follows is about price rather than costs, work from the price reduction scripts instead.

What belongs on the face of the sheet

• The date prepared, and a version number if you revise it.
• The assumed closing date, because per diem and prorations both key off it.
• The payoff good through date, or a statement that the payoff is estimated and not ordered.
• The source of each figure: per payoff statement dated, per statutory rate, estimated not quoted.
• The jurisdiction assumed. Everything above exists because that matters.

I could find no required disclaimer language in any of the four jurisdictions I checked, and none in the Code. Use your brokerage's approved version. A defensible one says the figures are estimates rather than a guarantee, that no title search has been performed so unknown liens may exist, that rates are current as of the date prepared, that no tax advice is given, and that the settlement statement controls.

What this guide does not cover

Three neighbours to this topic, each with its own guide.

• What the house is worth. A net sheet takes price as an input. Getting it right is a different discipline, covered in how to do a CMA that wins the listing.
• The appointment the sheet sits inside. The structure is in the listing presentation template. The net sheet is one section of it, not the whole thing.
• Sellers who are their own agent. A FSBO asking you for a net sheet is a different conversation, handled in the FSBO conversion guide.

Getting the sheet right does not win listings by itself. It removes the reason a seller hesitates, which is not knowing what they walk away with. If the harder problem is filling the calendar at all, that is what my real estate coaching program is for.

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Frequently asked questions

What is a seller net sheet?

A seller net sheet is an estimate, usually prepared by the listing agent, of what a seller will receive after every cost of sale is deducted from the price. It typically covers brokerage compensation, transfer and recordation taxes, settlement and title charges, the mortgage payoff, association fees, prorated taxes and dues, and any concession to the buyer. Nothing on it binds anyone. The seller's controlling figures arrive on the settlement statement, and on a seller Closing Disclosure where the settlement agent prepares one. The buyer's Closing Disclosure is the borrower's document, and a cash sale produces none at all.

Who prepares a seller net sheet?

Usually the listing agent, before the property goes on the market and again when an offer arrives. Title and settlement companies also produce estimates of proceeds, which come from the party who will actually disburse. I could not find a state regulating agent-prepared net sheets by name, but state misrepresentation and disclosure rules can reach a careless one.

How is a net sheet different from a Closing Disclosure?

A Closing Disclosure is a federal form produced by the lender through the settlement agent under Regulation Z at 12 CFR sections 1026.19(f) and 1026.38, and it must reach the consumer at least three business days before consummation. A net sheet is an informal estimate with no prescribed content, no timing rule and no tolerance limits. An ALTA settlement statement is a third document, produced at closing, which ALTA says is not meant to replace the Closing Disclosure.

Should the mortgage payoff or the loan balance go on a net sheet?

The payoff, always. A payoff statement is the lender's binding figure through a stated date and includes interest accrued to that date, a payoff statement fee, a wire fee, the release recording fee, and anything the servicer has capitalised. On a $400,000 balance at 6.5 percent, per diem interest alone is about $71 a day, roughly $2,137 across a thirty day escrow. Under 12 CFR section 1026.36(c)(3) a servicer must provide an accurate payoff statement within a reasonable time and no more than seven business days after a written request, with exceptions including bankruptcy and foreclosure.

How does buyer-broker compensation appear on a net sheet after the NAR settlement?

It can appear either as broker compensation or as a seller concession, and the two are not interchangeable. Since 17 August 2024 offers of compensation may not be published on an MLS, written buyer agreements are required before touring, and the listing agent needs the seller's prior approval before an offer of compensation is made or paid. The seller nets the same either way, but a generic concession consumes the buyer's interested party contribution capacity, capped at 9, 6 or 3 percent by loan to value on a conventional principal residence, while compensation structured as such has generally sat outside those caps under April 2024 agency guidance. Confirm the current treatment with the buyer's lender.

What transfer taxes does a seller pay?

It depends entirely on jurisdiction. In Virginia the grantor tax is 0.10 percent of price, and the Northern Virginia localities add a WMATA capital fee and a congestion relief fee for a seller-side total of 0.30 percent. DC charges 1.1 percent, rising to 1.45 percent on the entire amount once consideration reaches $400,000. Maryland's state tax is 0.5 percent, customarily split, with county transfer taxes on top. West Virginia runs 0.33 to 0.55 percent.

Should a seller net sheet show one number or a range?

A range, with the midpoint shown inside it. At listing six lines are genuinely unknowable: the payoff until it is ordered, any draw on a home equity line, buyer-broker compensation, any concession, repair credits after inspection, and liens that only surface in the title search. A single number asserts a precision the inputs do not support, and it produces the you-told-me conversation at closing. Date the sheet and label any contingency you carry.