How to Sell a House in 2026: Commissions, Costs, and What You Actually Keep

Two Numbers Say the Opposite Thing About 2026. Both Are True.

The price sellers are asking is falling. In June 2026 the median list price was $430,000, down 2.5 percent from a year earlier. That is the eighth straight monthly decline, and the steepest drop since Realtor.com began keeping this record in 2017.[2]

The price homes are actually selling for is at an all-time high. The National Association of Realtors put the median price of a home that closed in June 2026 at $440,600.[3]

This is not a contradiction. It is the whole story of 2026 in one line. Sellers are lowering what they ask because buyers stopped paying the old asking prices. The homes that do sell are still good homes at real prices. In plain words: the market did not crash. It stopped tolerating a fantasy number on the sign.

Two more facts set the stage. Mortgage rates are stuck: Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed at 6.49 percent on July 9, 2026 — almost exactly where it sat a year ago (6.72 percent). And homes are not sitting. The median home spent 53 days on the market in June, which is the same as last June, and the same as June 2019. The pandemic-era frenzy is over; so is the fear that followed it.[1, 2]

One warning about a number you will see everywhere. Headlines say America has a 10.3-month glut of homes. That figure is from the Census Bureau and it covers newly built homes only. The market for existing homes — which is the one you are in — had 4.6 months of supply in June. Six months is roughly the line between a buyer’s and a seller’s market. Builders are drowning. You are not.[4, 3]

The Rules Changed. The Price Did Not.

On August 17, 2024, the rules of American real estate changed. You have probably heard that this killed the six percent commission. It did not. Understanding exactly what changed — and what did not — is worth more money to you than anything else in this article.

Here is the actual rule. MLS Policy 8.11 says the multiple listing service “must not accept listings containing an offer of compensation in the MLS.” Read it again. It bans publishing the offer in one specific database. It does not ban the seller from paying. A second rule, 8.13, requires a buyer to sign a written agreement with their agent before touring a home.[5]

So can you still pay the buyer’s agent? Yes. NAR says so on its own consumer page: “Sellers can still offer compensation off an MLS.” Nothing stops you from covering it through a seller concession or by splitting your own listing agent’s fee. What changed is that it is no longer automatic. It became a negotiation.[6]

One trap almost every article falls into. You cannot use an MLS concession as a disguised advertisement for buyer-agent pay. NAR’s settlement FAQ is explicit: an MLS must ensure that seller concessions “are not limited to or conditioned upon the retention of or payment to a cooperating broker, buyer broker, or other buyer representative.” A concession posted in the MLS has to be a plain, unconditional credit — usable for closing costs, for anything.[7]

Now the part nobody wants to say out loud. Two years later, the price has not moved. Redfin measured the average buyer-agent commission at 2.42 percent in the third quarter of 2025 — up from 2.36 percent a year earlier, and essentially flat against the 2.43 percent it recorded the quarter before. Redfin’s own word for it is “leveling out.” Not falling. Leveling out.[8]

The U.S. Department of Justice agrees, and said so in court. In a December 2025 filing, the Antitrust Division wrote: “Yet real-estate broker commissions in the United States have remained at 5% to 6% for decades — two to three times more than that in other developed economies.” That was written sixteen months after the new rules took effect. The government does not believe the problem is solved.[9]

Even the slow decline that did happen started long before the lawsuits. Federal Reserve researchers tracked buyer-agent rates drifting from roughly 3 percent in the late 1990s to about 2.7 percent by 2023 — a gentle, decades-long slide that owes nothing to any settlement. So here is the honest summary for a seller in 2026: the door to negotiation was unlocked, and almost nobody walked through it.[10]

And the Settlement Everyone Talks About Is Not Even Final Yet

A judge approved the NAR settlement in November 2024, and NAR agreed to pay $418 million. Most articles stop there, in the past tense. They should not. Objectors appealed, and the case is still sitting at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. It was argued on January 14, 2026. As of today, July 14, 2026, there is still no decision.[11, 12]

What does that mean for you, practically? The practice changes are in force today — the MLS ban and the written buyer agreement are real, and your agent must follow them. But the approval that blessed the whole deal is still under review. If you are selling in 2026, follow the rules as they stand, and do not assume this story is over.

One more rule you may be offered, and should think about carefully. NAR still has its Clear Cooperation Policy: once a listing is marketed to the public, the broker must put it in the MLS within one business day. In 2025 NAR added an option on top of it, called delayed marketing — you can ask your broker to hold the listing back from public search sites for a window your local MLS defines. Note the wording of NAR’s own announcement: it added flexibility while retaining Clear Cooperation. The policy was not repealed, whatever you may have read.[13, 14]

Should you use it? Be careful. Keeping your home off the public sites means fewer buyers see it. The Consumer Federation of America warned in April 2026 that the spread of these private, off-market “pocket listings” is a threat to consumers, and the National Urban League’s president said it “threatens to usher in a new form of redlining.” A quiet listing is a smaller auction. Sometimes that is what you want. Usually it is not.[15]

The Sentence Your Agent Is Required to Show You

Under the new rules, a written buyer agreement must carry “a conspicuous statement that broker fees and commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable.” That sentence is now mandatory. It is also the single most useful sentence in American real estate, and it applies to your side too: your listing agreement is negotiable, and it always was.[5]

So what is actually on the table? Three things, and they are separate. First, your own agent’s fee — a percentage, a flat fee, or a sliding scale that rewards a higher sale price. Second, whether you contribute anything toward the buyer’s agent, and how much. Third, what you get for the money: professional photography, a floor plan, staging, open houses, paid placement. Ask for the marketing plan in writing before you sign anything.

A word on the arithmetic, because it is brutal. On a $440,600 home, every half a percentage point of commission is about $2,200. Cutting a combined 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent is not a rounding error. It is the cost of a moving truck, a new refrigerator, and the first month in the next place.

The Contract That Can Make You Pay a Commission After It Expires

Before your home ever goes on the market, you sign a listing agreement. Almost nobody reads it. It comes in three shapes, and the difference is money.

Exclusive right to sell is the common one. Your agent gets paid no matter who finds the buyer — including if you find them yourself. Exclusive agency means only that one brokerage represents you, but if you produce the buyer with no agent involved, you owe nothing. An open listing has no exclusivity at all: whoever brings the buyer gets paid, and if nobody does, nobody does. Brokers strongly prefer the first. You are allowed to ask for the second.

Now the clause that surprises people, usually months later. It is called a protection period (sometimes a safety or tail clause). It says: if your listing expires, and then you sell to somebody your former agent had introduced during the listing, you still owe the commission. It is not a scam — it exists so an agent cannot be cut out at the last minute. But the length is negotiable, and so is the requirement that the agent hand you a written list of protected buyers when the listing ends. Ask for both.

Two other lines to negotiate before you sign: how long the listing runs, and how you get out of it if the relationship goes wrong. Listing rules are set by state law and local practice, not by any federal agency, so the exact terms in front of you will differ from your neighbor’s in another state. Read the paper you are actually signing.

Overpricing Is Not a Free Option. It Has a Price.

Every seller thinks the same thing: “Let us try a high number. We can always come down.” You can come down. But the first two weeks on the market are the only two weeks when every serious buyer in your area is looking at your home for the first time. Spend them on a fantasy price and you spend the best inventory you will ever have.

The market keeps the receipt. In June 2026, 18.8 percent of all active listings had already cut their price. That is nearly one in five homes publicly admitting the first number was wrong.[2]

Read that number carefully, though, because most people read it backwards. It is 1.9 percentage points lower than a year ago. Fewer sellers are being forced to cut, not more. Realtor.com’s own explanation for falling asking prices is “seller realism rather than distress.” Sellers are getting the price right the first time more often. That is what a normal market looks like.[2]

And it depends enormously on where you live. In June 2026, price cuts hit 29.0 percent of listings in Denver, 28.7 percent in Phoenix and 27.6 percent in Austin — but only 7.1 percent in Hartford and 9.4 percent in New York City. There is no national housing market. There is only your zip code. Ask your agent for the actual recent sales — the comparable sales, or “comps” — on your street, not a printout of national headlines.[2]

The Kitchen Remodel Is a Trap. The Garage Door Is Not.

Every year, the research firm Zonda prices out common home projects and asks what they add at resale. The 2025 edition, the 38th, is still the current one. Its top performer is not the kitchen or the bathroom. It is the garage door: about $4,672 to replace, and roughly $12,507 back at sale — 267.7 percent recouped. Steel entry door and stone veneer take second and third. All three are things you see from the street before you ever open the front door.[16]

Compare that to a minor kitchen remodel at 112.9 percent, or a fiberglass grand entrance at 84.7 percent — where you lose money. The lesson is boring and correct: the money is in the curb, not in the kitchen. Paint, clean, fix what is visibly broken, and stop. A buyer will pay for a house that looks cared for. A buyer will not reimburse you for the countertop you chose.[16]

Two honest caveats. Those percentages are national averages, and your city will differ. And the “value at resale” side of the ratio comes from estimates by real estate professionals, not from tracking the same house through two sales. A 267.7 percent recovery does not mean your home value multiplies by 2.7. It means, in the judgment of agents, a new garage door is one of the cheapest ways to change the first impression of a house.[16]

What the Seller Pays, and Why Nobody Can Give You a National Number

Search for “seller closing costs” and you will be told they run 6 to 10 percent of the sale price. Be careful with that. There is no government statistic for seller closing costs. The percentages circulating online come from discount brokerages and lead-generation sites, which have an interest in the number looking big. The only honest way to do this is from the bottom up.

Your list, in rough order of size. The real estate commission. The transfer tax, if your state or city has one. Title and escrow charges, where local custom decides who pays. Your prorated share of property tax up to the closing day, and any HOA transfer fee. Recording fees. And finally, the big one that is not a “cost” at all: paying off whatever is left on your mortgage.[17]

The transfer tax alone explains why a national average is meaningless. In Texas it is zero — and not by accident. The state constitution says no law may impose a transfer tax on a deed. In Washington, the state real estate excise tax is graduated: 1.10 percent up to $525,000, rising to 3.0 percent above about $3 million, with local tax on top, and the state says outright that “usually, the seller pays this tax.”[18, 19]

Florida charges a documentary stamp tax of 70 cents per $100 — 0.70 percent — and says every party to the deed is liable regardless of who agreed to pay. Pennsylvania takes 1 percent at the state level plus local tax, and holds buyer and seller jointly liable. California’s county tax is $0.55 per $500 — about 0.11 percent — before city add-ons. Same house, same price, wildly different bill.[20, 21, 22]

One document you should know exists. Federal rules require the settlement agent to hand you, the seller, your own Closing Disclosure covering your side of the deal. Note the timing: the buyer must receive theirs three business days early, but the seller’s is only due “no later than the day of consummation.” In plain terms, you may not see your final numbers until closing day. Ask for a draft a week ahead. Nobody will offer it.[23]

Two Different Subtractions, and Almost Everyone Mixes Them Up

When people ask “how much will I make on the house,” they are actually asking two different questions and do not know it. One is how much cash lands in my account. The other is how much profit the IRS thinks I made. These two numbers are calculated differently, and they can be wildly far apart.

The cash is straightforward. Take the sale price. Subtract the commission. Subtract your closing costs — transfer tax, title and escrow, prorated property tax, HOA fees, recording. Subtract any credits you gave the buyer. Then subtract the payoff on your mortgage, including any home equity loan or line of credit. What is left is the wire that hits your bank. That is your net proceeds.

Now the part that catches people. The IRS does not subtract your mortgage. Not one dollar of it. Your taxable gain starts with the sale price minus your selling costs — the IRS calls that the amount realized — and then subtracts what the home cost you, adjusted for improvements. Your loan balance appears nowhere in that formula.[42]

Which produces the ugliest surprise in this article. A seller who refinanced repeatedly, or took cash out of a home equity line, can walk out of closing with almost no money and still owe tax on a large gain. The cash was already spent years ago; the tax bill did not care. Do both calculations before you list, not after.

What You Are Legally Required to Tell the Buyer

There is exactly one disclosure the federal government forces on nearly every home seller, and it is about lead paint. If your home was built before 1978, federal law requires you to disclose any known lead-based paint or hazards, hand over any reports you have, give the buyer the EPA pamphlet, and attach a lead warning statement to the contract.[24, 25]

You must also give the buyer a 10-day window to have the home tested for lead, unless you both agree in writing to a different period. And the penalty for hiding it is not a slap on the wrist: a knowing violation can expose you to three times the amount of damages. The EPA pamphlet — Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home — was updated with a new edition in 2026, so make sure your agent is not handing out an old one.[26, 27]

Everything else is state law. Most states make you fill out a written disclosure form about the condition of the property — the roof, the foundation, past flooding, known defects. The rules differ enormously. In California, for example, if the disclosure arrives after the buyer has already made an offer, the buyer gets a window to walk away: three days if it was handed over in person, five if it came by mail or electronically. Your state will have its own version. Do not guess, and do not copy what a friend did in another state.[22]

Finally, a legal trap almost nobody warns sellers about. The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to refuse to sell, or to steer a buyer, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability. Yes, there is a narrow exemption for some private sales. Read how narrow it is: you must own three or fewer single-family homes, use no broker or agent at all, and publish no discriminatory advertising. Hire an agent and the exemption evaporates. And the ban on discriminatory advertising applies to everyone, always, exemption or not. “Perfect for a young family” in your listing is not a charming phrase. It is a legal problem.[28, 29, 30]

The Highest Offer Is Not Always the Best Offer

An offer is not a number. It is a number plus a list of escape hatches. Those escape hatches are called contingencies, and each one is a door the buyer can walk out of while keeping their deposit.

The four that matter. A financing contingency: the buyer walks if the loan falls through. An appraisal contingency: the buyer walks if the home appraises below the contract price. An inspection contingency: the buyer walks, or demands repairs, based on what the inspector finds. And a home sale contingency: the buyer only buys if their own house sells first — the weakest offer of them all, because it hands your closing date to a stranger in another town.

Two more things to weigh. The earnest money — the deposit the buyer puts up to show they are serious. A bigger deposit is a bigger promise. And the closing date: a buyer who can close when you need to move is worth real money, and a buyer who cannot is worth less than their offer says.

This is why a cash offer often beats a higher financed one. No loan means no financing contingency, no lender appraisal to fail, and no underwriter to change their mind in week five. A cash buyer is not paying you more. They are paying you with certainty, and in a market where roughly one deal in seven falls apart, certainty has a price.

The Two Moments Your Price Gets Renegotiated

You accepted an offer. You have not sold the house. Between the handshake and the closing table sit two events, and each one can move the price: the inspection and the appraisal.

The inspector works for the buyer, and will find things. Some are real; some are a line item on a report that generates a negotiation. You have three answers, and only three: fix it, give a credit at closing instead of fixing it, or refuse. A credit is usually the smartest of the three. It costs you a known number, it does not delay the closing, and it does not put you in charge of a contractor working on a house you are leaving.

The appraisal is the bigger danger, because it is not your buyer’s opinion — it is the lender’s. The bank lends against the appraised value, not your contract price. If the appraisal comes in low, the buyer has to cover the gap in cash, or you cut the price, or the deal dies.[31]

And here the government is openly on the buyer’s side. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tells buyers that “it is very risky to purchase a home for more than the appraised value,” and that a low appraisal is “strong evidence that the price was above the market value.” That is a regulator handing your buyer the argument for a price cut. Expect it to be used.[31]

You are not defenseless. If the appraisal used bad comparable sales, got the square footage wrong, or missed a renovation, the borrower can request a reconsideration of value — an ROV — asking the lender to look again. The CFPB says so plainly. Almost nobody uses it. Bring your own evidence: recent sales on your street, receipts and permits for work you did, photos. An appraisal is a professional opinion, and opinions can be wrong.[32]

One in Seven Deals Dies. Plan for It.

Redfin tracks how many signed deals never make it to closing. In May 2026, 13.6 percent of them fell through. That is roughly one in seven — and it has been that way for a while.[33]

Read it carefully, because the headlines get it wrong. That share was unchanged from the month before, the fourth straight flat month, and it has stayed inside a band of roughly 13.4 to 14 percent for two years. It is also down from the 2023 peak. Deals are not collapsing at a new rate. This is simply the normal failure rate of American home sales, and it was always there.[33]

What that means for you is practical, not emotional. Do not sign a purchase contract on your next home that depends entirely on this sale closing on time. Do not schedule the movers around a date that a stranger’s underwriter controls. And if a deal does die, understand that your listing goes back on the market with a scar — buyers will ask why. Have the inspection report and your answer ready.

Selling It Yourself, and the Companies That Will Buy It Today

If commissions are negotiable, why not skip them? People try. In NAR’s most recent survey of sellers, 91 percent used an agent and only 5 percent sold it themselves — an all-time low for for-sale-by-owner. That number went down after the commission rules changed, not up.[34]

That is worth sitting with. Doing it yourself means you write the listing, price it, market it, hold the open houses, read the offers, manage the inspection, satisfy the appraiser, handle the disclosures — and take on the fair housing rules personally. It is real work, and the exemptions you might be counting on are narrower than you think.

Then there is the other door: the companies that will simply buy your house. Opendoor is the biggest. It is worth knowing the real shape of this business rather than the myth. In 2025 Opendoor sold 11,791 homes at an 8.0 percent gross margin. Then it changed gears. In the first quarter of 2026 its gross margin rose to 10.0 percent, it bought 45 percent more homes than the quarter before, and it called that its largest buying quarter since 2022. Whatever you have read, the instant-buyers are not retreating.[35, 36]

What they sell you is speed and certainty. What they charge for it is the spread between what they pay you and what they sell for, plus a service fee. And there is a warning on the label. In 2024 the Federal Trade Commission sent nearly $62 million in refunds to 54,689 home sellers, after finding that Opendoor’s marketing was deceptive: in the FTC’s words, most people who sold to Opendoor “made thousands of dollars less than they would have made selling their homes using the traditional process.”[37]

That case was about conduct years ago, and the company has changed since. The point is not that instant offers are a scam. The point is that speed has a price, and the price is not printed on the offer. If you take one, get a normal agent’s opinion of value first — for free — so you know exactly what you are trading away.

The Frauds That Hunt Sellers, Not Buyers

Start with the one that is not a scam in the ordinary sense, because it was legal paperwork. A company called MV Realty offered homeowners a few hundred dollars in cash. In exchange, it took the exclusive right to list their home for the next forty years — and quietly recorded a lien against the house. California’s Attorney General settled with the company in May 2026 for $2.5 million, delivering relief to nearly 1,500 homeowners and banning it from California real estate for five years.[38]

Note who did that: state attorneys general, in California, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Florida — not the FTC. The lesson generalizes. If anyone offers you cash today in exchange for a signature about a sale someday, you are not being given money. You are selling an option on your own home, and you are selling it cheap.[38]

Second: the ads warning that thieves can steal your house with a forged deed, and selling you “home title lock insurance” to stop it. The FTC’s consumer alert is unusually blunt: “Stop. Take a breath. It’s just a ploy to scare you.” It is not title insurance. In the FTC’s words, “it’s not insurance at all” — it is a monitoring service that tells you after the deed has already moved. You can check your title at your county land records office for free.[39]

Third, and by far the most expensive: the wire. Criminals watch real estate transactions, then email you or your closing agent with new payment instructions right before closing. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded $275.1 million in real estate fraud losses in 2025, up from $173.6 million the year before — a 58 percent jump in one year. Business email compromise, the underlying technique, cost Americans over $3 billion.[40]

Sellers assume this is a buyer’s problem, because the buyer is the one wiring a down payment. It is not. Your sale proceeds get wired too — a single large transfer, to an account someone could substitute. The rule is simple and it has no exceptions. Never accept wire instructions by email. Call the title company on a number you looked up yourself, not one printed in the email, and confirm every digit out loud. Do it even when you are sure. Especially when you are sure.[40]

Taxes on the Sale, in One Page

Most sellers owe nothing. If the home was your main home for at least two of the last five years, you can generally exclude up to $250,000 of gain from your income, or $500,000 on a joint return, and you can only use this once every two years. That exclusion is why the great majority of home sales produce no federal tax bill at all.[41]

That exclusion has enough moving parts — partial exclusions, depreciation from a home office or a former rental, how the excess is reported — to need its own article, and it has one. If your gain is anywhere near the limit, read our dedicated guide: the Section 121 home sale exclusion. What follows here is only what a seller needs at the closing table.

If your gain does exceed the exclusion, only the excess is taxed, and it is taxed at long-term capital gains rates. For 2026 the IRS sets the 0 percent bracket up to $49,450 of taxable income for a single filer and $98,900 for a married couple filing jointly; the 15 percent bracket runs to $545,500 and $613,700 respectively; above that it is 20 percent. A high earner may also owe the 3.8 percent net investment income tax — but only on the part of the gain that the exclusion did not cover.[43, 44]

Two things happen at the closing table that you should recognize. First, the closing agent may hand you a certification to sign. If you swear the home was your principal residence and the full gain is excludable, and the price is $250,000 or less — $500,000 if you certify that you are married — the closer does not have to file a Form 1099-S at all. Second, remember that your commission and selling costs do not get added to what the home cost you. They come off the sale price to produce the amount realized. Getting this backwards is the most common mistake on a home sale return.[45, 46, 42]

Two special cases, briefly. If you are not a U.S. person, a rule called FIRPTA requires the buyer to withhold 15 percent of the sale price and send it to the IRS. There is an exemption at $300,000 and a reduced 10 percent rate up to $1,000,000 — but both apply only if the buyer will actually live in the home. Price alone is not enough, and that condition is the part people miss.[47, 48]

And if you are selling for less than you owe — a short sale, or a home headed for foreclosure — be aware that the tax break which used to protect forgiven mortgage debt expired at the end of 2025, which can turn forgiven debt into taxable income. That is a different situation with different rules, and we cover it in our guides to foreclosure and mortgage delinquency and canceled debt and Form 1099-C.

The Money Lands. Now It Is Uninsured.

Here is a problem almost nobody sees coming. FDIC deposit insurance covers $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, per ownership category. The median American home sold for $440,600 in June 2026. Pay off the mortgage and you can still be sitting on a wire that is larger than the insurance on the account it just landed in.[49, 3]

It is usually a short-lived exposure, and there are simple fixes: split the money across banks, use different ownership categories, or move it into Treasury securities. Just know that a money market mutual fund is not FDIC-insured, whatever its name sounds like. If the cash is the down payment on your next home in ninety days, safety matters more than yield.[49]

If the money is not earmarked — you are downsizing, moving in with family, or renting for a while — then you have just converted an illiquid asset into the most flexible thing in finance, and the decision of what to do with it deserves the same care you gave the sale. That is a different question, and the arithmetic of time is unforgiving in both directions.

Frequently Asked Questions About Selling a House in 2026

What to Remember

The commission is negotiable, and almost nobody negotiates it. The 2024 rules banned publishing buyer-agent pay in the MLS. They never banned you from paying it, and sellers still do — around 2.42 percent, essentially unchanged. The DOJ says U.S. commissions have sat at 5 to 6 percent for decades. On a $440,600 home, half a percentage point is about $2,200. Ask.

Run two calculations before you list, not after. Your cash at closing subtracts the mortgage payoff. Your taxable gain does not. A seller who has refinanced heavily can walk away with almost nothing and still owe tax.

The first two weeks are your only two weeks. Price for the market you are in, not the one you remember. Nearly one in five active listings has already cut its price — though fewer than last year. And spend your prep money on the curb, not the kitchen.

Assume one deal in seven dies, and never trust a wire instruction that arrives by email. Contract cancellations have run at roughly 13.6 percent for two years, so do not chain your next purchase to this closing date. And real estate wire fraud losses hit $275 million in 2025, up 58 percent in a single year. Call the title company on a number you looked up yourself, and read every digit aloud.

This article is educational and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Listing agreements, disclosure duties, and transfer taxes are governed by state law and differ substantially from one state to the next. Before you sign anything, confirm the rules where the property actually sits.