How Much Are Closing Costs for a Seller? Line by Line

Almost every seller does the same piece of math in their head: sale price minus what I still owe equals what I walk away with. Then the settlement statement arrives and there is a second column nobody warned them about. Commission, deed stamps, a title premium, recording fees, taxes split down to the day, and a line where you quietly handed the buyer a few thousand dollars in week five. None of it is hidden, exactly. It is just spread across four different rule books: your listing agreement, a state tax statute, a promulgated insurance rate schedule, and your purchase contract. This guide puts all of it in one place, prices each line with a real 2026 number, and shows the four rule books side by side for Florida, Texas, Georgia and Ohio.

Key highlights

• The commission is still the biggest line. The national average is 5.46%, which is $23,429 on the August 2026 median price of $429,100.
• What the government takes swings wildly by state. Same $429,100 sale: $3,003.70 in Florida deed stamps, $429.10 in Georgia, about $1,288 in Franklin County, Ohio, and nothing at all in Texas.
• Title insurance premiums are set by the state in Florida and Texas, so shopping for a cheaper premium is pointless. Shopping the settlement fee is not.
• Prorated property taxes, the mortgage payoff, liens and the HOA estoppel fee all come out of your proceeds before the wire goes out.
• 44.7% of August 2026 sales included a seller concession. Treat it as a budget line, not a surprise.
• A cash sale deletes the commission, the lender fees, the repair credits and the rate buydown. It does not delete the deed tax or your payoff.

The short answer

Take the August 2026 national median existing home price of $429,100 and put that house in Florida. Three lines can be priced before you even list it. A 5.46% commission is $23,429. Documentary stamps on the deed, at 70 cents per $100 of the price, are $3,003.70. An owner title policy at Florida’s promulgated rate is about $2,220. Those three together are $28,653, or 6.7% of the sale price, and that is before the closing agent’s fee, recording charges, your share of the year’s property taxes, and whatever you end up crediting the buyer.

Move the same house to Texas and the deed tax line vanishes entirely, because the Texas Constitution forbids it. Move it to Georgia and the state takes $429.10 instead of three thousand. The commission does not move much anywhere. That is the shape of the whole thing: one huge negotiable line, one government line that depends on your zip code, and a handful of small lines that add up faster than sellers expect.

What a seller’s closing costs actually are

“Closing costs” is not a legal category. It is a habit of speech for everything the closing agent subtracts from your sale price on the way to the wire. On a financed sale the buyer gets a Closing Disclosure from their lender three business days before closing, and the seller gets a separate settlement statement from the closing agent covering the seller’s side.

Everything on that seller page falls into four buckets, and it helps to think of them separately, because your power to change each one is completely different:

• Money to your agent. Negotiable. The biggest single number on the page.
• Money to the state and county. Fixed by statute. You cannot argue with it, but you can know it in advance to the penny.
• Money to the title or closing company. Part fixed by a state rate schedule, part just a price the company picked.
• Money to the buyer or your lender. Concessions, repair credits, your payoff, prorated taxes. This is where a clean-looking contract gets expensive.

Ask for a draft settlement statement as soon as the title work is done. Not the day before closing, when questioning a number means delaying the wire. Early, when there is still time to ask what a $450 “document preparation fee” is for.

Line 1: the agent commission, still the biggest number

Clever Real Estate surveyed 434 US agents in August 2026 and found a national average total commission of 5.46%, split roughly 2.76% to the listing agent and 2.70% to the buyer’s agent. On our $429,100 house that is $23,429, more than four times the deed tax, the title policy and the settlement fee combined.

Two things are worth saying plainly about it. First, the number is negotiable and always has been. The percentage in your listing agreement is a starting point somebody typed, not a rate set by anyone. Second, a discount only helps if the house still sells; a listing agent who earns their 2.76% by pricing correctly and getting the house closed is cheaper than a 1% agent whose listing sits for five months while you pay the carrying costs. We laid out that trade honestly here: cash offer versus listing with a realtor. And if you are thinking about skipping the listing side entirely, the step by step is here: how to sell a house without a realtor.

Line 2: what the state and county take when the deed records

This is the line sellers almost never see coming, and it is the one that changes most between states. The tax is on the document that transfers the property, and it is due when the deed is recorded. Here is what four states actually charge on that same $429,100 sale.

Florida: documentary stamp tax, 70 cents per $100

The Florida Department of Revenue charges 70 cents on each $100 or portion thereof of the total consideration on deeds statewide. On $429,100 that is $3,003.70. Miami-Dade is the exception: the base rate there is 60 cents per $100, plus a 45 cent surtax, and the surtax does not apply to documents transferring only a single-family dwelling. So a Miami-Dade house sale runs at 60 cents per $100, or $2,574.60 on the same price.

Georgia: one dollar per thousand

Georgia’s real estate transfer tax is $1 for the first $1,000 and 10 cents for each additional $100, which works out to $429.10 on our sale. The Georgia Department of Revenue is unusually direct about who pays it: the seller is typically liable, unless the parties agree in the sales contract that the buyer will pay the tax.

Ohio: a conveyance fee plus whatever the county adds

Ohio charges a state conveyance fee of $1 per $1,000, and each county board of commissioners may add a permissive fee of up to $3 per $1,000 on top. Franklin County, home to Columbus, adds $2 per $1,000, for a combined $3 per $1,000, plus a 50 cent transfer tax per parcel. On $429,100 that is about $1,288. Check your own county, because the permissive piece is a local decision and it varies.

Texas: zero

Article VIII, Section 29 of the Texas Constitution, added on November 3, 2015, says that after January 1, 2016 no law may be enacted that imposes a transfer tax on a transaction that conveys fee simple title to real property. There is no deed stamp line on a Texas seller’s statement. The exceptions written into the same section allow a tax on the issuance of title insurance, which is exactly where Texas puts its money instead.

Line 3: title insurance and the closing agent

Title insurance pays if somebody turns up later with a claim on the property you just sold: a missed heir, an old lien, a forged signature in the chain. The buyer’s lender always requires a policy. Whether the seller also buys the buyer an owner’s policy is contract and local custom.

In two of our four states the price is not up for discussion. Florida promulgates the rate by administrative rule: $5.75 per thousand of liability up to $100,000, then $5.00 per thousand from there to $1 million, with a $100 minimum premium. On $429,100 that is about $2,220. Texas goes further. Section 2703.151 of the Texas Insurance Code says the commissioner shall fix and promulgate the premium rates to be charged by a title insurance company or by a title insurance agent, and that a premium may not be charged at a rate different than the one the commissioner fixed. Every title company in Texas quotes the same premium, so shopping for a cheaper policy is wasted effort. Who pays for it is still your contract’s decision.

Georgia is its own case. The Georgia Supreme Court approved UPL Advisory Opinion 2003-2, holding that it is the unauthorized practice of law for someone other than a licensed Georgia attorney to close a real estate transaction or to prepare or facilitate the execution of the deed. A Georgia closing has an attorney fee on it, every time.

Then come the fees nobody regulates: the settlement or escrow fee, document preparation, wire fees, courier fees, and the county’s charge to record the deed and the satisfaction of your mortgage. Individually they look small. Together they are often several hundred dollars, and unlike the premium they are simply a price somebody chose. That makes them the part of the page worth questioning.

Line 4: prorations, payoffs and the association

Property taxes. You owe tax for the part of the year you owned the house, so the closing agent splits the annual bill at your closing date and credits the buyer your share. Florida shows why the date matters. The Florida Department of Revenue explains that tax collectors generally send bills in November, that paying early earns a discount of 4 percent in November, 3 percent in December, 2 percent in January and 1 percent in February, and that unpaid taxes become delinquent on April 1 with tax certificates sold on all unpaid items by June 1. Close a Florida house in October and your proceeds settle roughly ten months of tax you have not been billed for yet.

Your mortgage payoff. Not a closing cost in the strict sense, but it comes out of the same proceeds, and it is almost never the balance on your last statement. Ask your servicer for a written payoff good through your closing date. It includes interest to that exact day, and sometimes a recording fee for the satisfaction, so a closing that slips a week costs real money.

Liens, back taxes and code fines. Anything recorded against the property has to be cleared for the buyer to get clean title, and the title company will pull all of it. Most of the time these are paid straight out of your proceeds at closing rather than out of your pocket beforehand, which surprises people who assumed a lien would stop the sale. It does not stop it, it just shrinks the wire. The full explanation is here: can you sell a house with a lien on it.

The homeowners association. If the house is in an HOA, somebody has to pay for the estoppel certificate that tells the closing agent what you owe. Florida caps it: under section 720.30851 of the Florida Statutes the association may charge a reasonable fee for preparing and delivering an estoppel certificate that may not exceed $250, plus an additional $100 for delivery within three business days, plus up to $150 more if there are delinquent amounts owed. Other states leave it to the association, which is a good reason to ask for the number early.

Line 5: the buyer’s costs that end up being yours

This is the line that has grown the most, and it is the one no calculator on the internet includes. Redfin found that 44.7% of US home sales in August 2026 included a seller concession, up from 42.6% a year earlier and the highest August share since at least 2020. A concession is anything the seller gives that reduces the buyer’s total cost of buying the house: money toward repairs, money toward the buyer’s closing costs, or a mortgage rate buydown. Roughly 15.8% of homes sold that month had both a price cut and a concession.

It is not evenly spread. In Atlanta, 72.8% of August sales came with a concession. Charlotte was 67.9%, Phoenix 67.4%, Las Vegas 66.7%, Raleigh 66.3%. In markets like those, planning a sale with no concession line is planning for a market that does not exist right now.

Two neighbours of the same line belong in your budget too. Repairs after the inspection, which are either done or credited, and either way come off your number. And carrying costs while the house waits: NAR put the median time on market at 31 days in August 2026, and that clock starts after you have prepared and listed, and stops before the buyer’s loan closes. Mortgage, insurance, taxes, utilities and lawn care all keep running through every one of those days. We did the full arithmetic on a single house, three different ways, here: how much you actually lose selling a house as-is.

Your routes, side by side

Same house, same price, three ways to get out of it. The costs are different in kind, not just in size.

What an as-is cash sale actually removes

Most of the list above exists because a lender and two agents are in the room. Take them out and the page gets short. No commission, because there is no listing. No appraisal fee, no lender-required repairs, no rate buydown, no credit toward the buyer’s origination charges, because there is no loan. No staging, no photography, no months of mortgage payments on a house you are trying to leave.

What does not disappear is the government and the record. Florida still wants its 70 cents per $100 when the deed records. The county still charges to record. Your share of the year’s property taxes is still calculated to the day. Your mortgage payoff, any liens, any code fines still come out of the proceeds. Anyone who tells you a cash sale has zero costs is describing an offer where they are paying those lines, and that should be written down, not implied.

And the honest part: the offer is below retail. A cash buyer is pricing the repairs, the holding time and the risk, and takes that in the price instead of in fees. Whether that trade is good for you is arithmetic, not faith. Compare your net after a listing, with the commission and the concession and five months of carrying costs, against the cash number with almost nothing subtracted. Sometimes the listing wins by a mile. Sometimes the two land within a few thousand dollars of each other and the cash sale is done in three weeks. The numbers behind cash offers are here: what percentage cash home buyers actually pay, and the timeline is here: how fast a cash sale really closes.

How Sterling Home Offer helps

We buy single-family houses for cash, as-is, and we put the cost side in writing before you decide anything. A no-obligation offer within about 24 hours, based on the real condition of the house and real area sales. No agent commission and no fees on our side. We pay the standard closing costs a buyer pays, and the closing agent’s statement will show you exactly which lines those are, so you can hold the paper up against this article and check. Liens, back taxes and payoffs are handled out of the proceeds by the title company, the way they would be in any sale. You pick the closing date, whether that is three weeks out or after your move. If the answer for your house turns out to be “list it”, we will say so.

The bottom line

Seller closing costs are not one number, they are a stack of four, and only one of them is genuinely negotiable. The commission is the mountain. The state’s cut of the deed is fixed and knowable to the penny, and it is the difference between $3,003.70 in Florida and nothing at all in Texas on the same sale. Title premiums are set by rule in both those states, so the part worth pushing on is the unregulated settlement fee, not the insurance. And the newest line, the concession, now appears in nearly half of American sales and belongs in your math from day one. Get the draft settlement statement early, read it with a pen, and ask what each line is for. Nobody at the closing table will be offended, and it is the cheapest hour of work in the whole sale.