Seller net sheet
What you walk away with when you sell
Sale price, minus the payoff, minus the cost of selling. A handful of answers you already have — the price, roughly what you owe, the compensation you agreed to, when you expect to close — and the sheet works out the rest from that state’s own statute, a published closing firm’s fee schedule, a filed title scale or a calibrated tax rate. Priced for Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin or Wyoming. Whether you are the agent or the homeowner. Nothing to sign up for.
Common questions
What does a seller net sheet include?
Sale price, minus what is owed on the house, minus the cost of selling. The cost of selling always includes the compensation the seller agreed to and the seller’s share of the year’s property taxes, plus any association charges, repairs or concessions from the contract. What else appears depends on the state: a deed or transfer tax or fee the state charges the seller, the owner’s title policy where the seller customarily provides it, and — in Alabama, California, Georgia, Maine and South Carolina — income tax withheld from the proceeds at closing under that state’s own rule.
Is the mortgage payoff the same as the balance on the statement?
Close, but not the same. Interest accrues to the day the loan is actually paid, so the payoff figure is a little higher than the statement balance, and the payoff quote usually carries the release recording charge. The statement balance is a fine starting figure for this sheet; the servicer’s payoff quote is the exact one. The escrow balance is separate: the servicer returns it after the payoff, usually within thirty days, so it is not part of the net.
What does the state charge a seller on the deed or transfer?
Most states we cover here charge some form of deed recording fee or real estate transfer tax, and in most of them it is the seller’s liability by statute or the seller’s by custom, though the contract can shift it. The rate and structure are entirely different state to state — South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Georgia charge a flat fee per increment of price, Illinois splits a state and county rate, California’s is set by county ordinance under state law, Maine splits its statutory tax evenly between buyer and seller with no room for a contract to override it, Minnesota’s deed tax is the seller’s by custom, and Arkansas splits its own transfer tax equally between buyer and seller by statute unless the contract says otherwise. Several states break the pattern outright: Alabama’s real estate tax has no default seller-side treatment under the widely used statewide contract form, and Kansas, Alaska and Wyoming charge no transfer tax of any kind — Alaska’s constitution affirmatively bars the state and every local government from creating one. Missouri goes further still: its own constitution was amended to bar the state and every local government from ever imposing a new tax on a real estate sale at all. Louisiana has no general statewide transfer tax at all, though Orleans Parish charges its own documentary tax on an ordinary sale. The sheet computes the exact figure — or states plainly why there isn’t one — for the state selected above.
When does a state withhold income tax from the seller at closing?
Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia withhold from a seller who does not live in that state, at a rate and on a base set by that state’s own statute — Alabama’s rate differs by whether the seller is an individual or a business entity, and it carries its own exemption for a qualifying principal residence. Maine also withholds from a nonresident seller, but on the total sale price rather than the gain, only above a statutory price floor, and at one flat rate regardless of entity type; a seller can petition the state in advance for a reduced figure. California is different again: it withholds from every seller, resident or not, unless a specific exemption applies — a sale below a small statutory price floor, a qualifying principal residence, or a qualified business entity. Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Alaska, Louisiana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Missouri have no such requirement at all — Missouri’s absence goes further still, since it stopped taxing an individual’s capital gain on any sale, in-state seller or not, starting with the 2025 tax year. Wyoming’s absence is stronger yet: it has no state income tax of any kind, on a home sale or anything else, so there is no tax to withhold against in the first place. It is real money that does not arrive at the table, but it is a prepayment of the seller’s income tax, credited on their return for the year of sale, with any excess refunded.
Why does the sheet ask for compensation instead of assuming a rate?
Because there is no typical rate. Compensation is negotiated between the seller and the agent, it changed materially in 2024, and any figure a website puts in that box is a claim about what agents charge. Enter the percentage from the listing agreement, or the dollar figure under refine, and the sheet works from that and nowhere else.
Where do the estimates come from?
A published seller-side fee schedule from a real closing firm where one could be found, a filed title premium scale where the custom is the seller’s to pay, and a calibrated tax rate prorated from the start of the tax year to the closing date. Each is marked estimate on the sheet, and the real figure replaces it the moment you enter one under refine. Where no such schedule exists for a state — an Illinois owner’s-policy premium, a California escrow fee — the sheet asks for the figure directly rather than publishing a guess.
Why is the net marked provisional?
Because a line only you can answer has no figure yet, usually the payoff or the compensation. A blank line stays on the sheet with a note saying what it is waiting on, and the net shown is the net before it. A sheet that quietly treats a blank as zero produces a confident number that is wrong; this one shows you the number and tells you what is missing from it.
Selling to buy? The net at the bottom of this sheet is the down payment side of the move-up math, and today’s rates for the next house are one click away, in any of the states we lend in. The buyer’s side of the same table is the closing cost estimator for agents.