Sellers ask me two questions before anything else. What is my house worth, and what will it cost me to sell it. There is an entire industry built around answering the first one. The second one usually gets a subject change, which is strange, because it is the more answerable of the two.
So here it is. Real categories, exact numbers where exact numbers exist, and a plain flag wherever the answer depends on your house.
The Commission Conversation
Start with the thing nobody wants to raise first. No commission in Texas is set by law. Not mine, not anyone's. Compensation is negotiated, agreed in writing, and you owe what your signed documents say you owe and nothing else. That's not a nicety, it's the rule. Since January, Texas requires a written agreement with a buyer before an agent shows them a single house, and it has to say what the fee is, not gesture at a "customary" one. On the selling side, a broker can't collect a commission at all without one. Any conversation that starts somewhere other than there has started wrong.
If you've sold a house before, your mental model needs updating twice over. The seller used to pay both agents. Not because anyone required it, but because it was expected, and the offer to the buyer's agent was advertised through the MLS. That ended in 2024.
Then the paperwork changed again this summer. The Texas REALTORS listing agreement was revised effective June 15, 2026, and the revised TREC contracts became mandatory on July 1. Between them, they moved the question of who pays the buyer's agent out of your listing agreement entirely.
Here's what that means in practice. Your listing agreement now covers one thing: what you pay my broker. Broker-to-broker compensation has been stripped out of Paragraph 5. Instead, a buyer's agent asks for their fee inside the offer, on a line in the contract. So you're not making one decision in advance. You're making it offer by offer, with the rest of the terms in front of you.
That's better for you, and most sellers don't realize it yet. A full price offer asking you to cover three percent for the buyer's agent is a different proposition from a lowball asking the same. That figure is negotiable like any other term. You can agree to one and counter the other. It sits alongside the closing date and the option period, and we treat it that way.
The thing to hold onto: a buyer whose agent isn't paid through the deal has to cover it out of pocket, and some of those buyers drop your house without telling you why. So refusing on principle costs you something. Refusing on a specific weak offer usually doesn't.
I'll tell you my own fee in the first conversation rather than making you ask. I don't discount it, because I work the same way for every client, and the only ways to charge one seller less are to do less for them or to be unfair to everyone paying in full. Neither is a business I want to run. What I will do is put the whole structure in writing before you sign anything, so there's no line item you meet for the first time at closing.
The Listing Agreement
Before your house goes near the market, you sign a listing agreement. Texas does not promulgate a standard one. It is a private contract between you and the brokerage, which means the terms are open and you should read it like the contract it is.
It sets the term, what I am committed to doing, which expenses belong to whom, and how the agreement ends, including what happens if you want out early. Whether you can cancel at any time is answered in that document, not in anyone's verbal reassurance. We go through the exit terms before you sign, not after.
One thing most sellers do not know: a listing belongs to the brokerage, not to the individual agent. That matters more than it sounds like it does, and it is worth understanding before you sign rather than in the middle of a disagreement.
I will walk you through every clause and answer every question. If you want to take it home and read it overnight, you should.
What Closing Actually Costs
Texas does one unusually seller-friendly thing. It regulates title insurance premiums, which means I can give you exact numbers instead of a shrug.
On the rates that took effect on March 1, 2026, the basic owner's title policy premium is $9,286 on a two million dollar sale, $13,346 at three million, $17,406 at four million, and $21,466 at five million. Those rates came down 6.2 percent that day, so any figure you find in an older article is high. Who pays the premium, you or the buyer, is not fixed by law. It is settled in the contract, like most things in this business.
That basic premium covers the insurance, the title examination, and the closing service. It does not cover everything with the word title near it. Recording fees, tax certificates, endorsements, and delivery charges can all appear as separate lines, and escrow fees vary by company. No statewide figure exists for any of that, so the move is to get an itemized written quote from the title company early rather than find it at the table.
The rest of the closing column, quickly. A survey: the contract decides whether your existing one is used or a new one is ordered, and who pays. Property taxes are prorated through closing day, and in central Austin that proration is real money, so it gets modeled up front rather than assumed. Texas has no transfer tax on a standard home sale, which reliably surprises sellers relocating from almost anywhere else. And if you are in a subdivision or townhome association, the resale certificate is capped by statute at $375, with $75 for an update. That cap does not apply to condominiums, which sit under a different part of the code, and it covers the certificate rather than every other fee an association can invent. Ask for the full fee schedule early.
Getting the House Ready
Here is where I simply will not give you a number, because any number I gave you would be invented. There is no reliable published benchmark for staging, photography, or preparation at this level. Anyone quoting you an average is guessing at your house from a spreadsheet.
Costs come from scoped proposals for your actual property, and prep is a strategy decision anyway. Some houses need genuine work. Some need editing. Spending heavily on the wrong one is how a good sale turns into an expensive lesson, and I have watched it happen to sellers who were trying to be thorough.
One unglamorous thing to check first: the listing agreement specifies which of these costs are included, which are advanced and reimbursed, and which are simply yours. Read that paragraph before the invoices arrive.
Your Net Number Is Not Your Taxable Gain
Two different calculations get confused at this stage, and confusing them is expensive.
Your net proceeds are the sale price minus payoffs, agreed costs, and prorations. That is a closing worksheet. We build yours before you list and keep it updated as things move.
Your taxable gain is entirely different arithmetic, built on what you paid, what you improved, and your own tax picture. If the house has been your primary residence for the required period, federal law generally lets you exclude up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 for many married couples filing jointly. At these price points, plenty of sales clear those thresholds comfortably. That is not bad news. It is just CPA territory, and the time to sit down with yours is before you list rather than at the closing table.
If You Would Rather Sell Privately
Discretion is a real option and I use it regularly. Inside the MLS there is one version of it: delayed marketing, where the listing is entered but held back from public websites for a set period. Everything else sits outside the MLS entirely. A true office exclusive is shared only within the brokerage and never entered at all, and beyond that there are private platforms and agent networks that matter most at the top of the market. Not every agent has access to those. Either route needs your signed consent, because you're giving up exposure and the rules want that to be a deliberate choice.
What I owe you is the trade-off. Privacy costs exposure. Fewer eyes means fewer offers, and fewer offers means you learn less about what the market would have paid. Zillow's analysis of 2023 and 2024 sales put off-MLS homes about 1.5 percent behind comparable MLS listings. That figure gets quoted at sellers constantly, and it's worth knowing it's carried by the cheap end. Zillow's own tier breakdown had the gap at 3.1 percent at the bottom of the market and 0.4 percent at the top. The research is contested too, with Compass reporting a premium, and the two sides are still arguing about it.
A private listing isn't a hidden one. Between agent networks and the private platforms, these houses reach the buyers who are in the market at that price. Going out privately first is also the best tool I have for testing a price. You get real feedback on a real house before the clock starts, and unlike a public price cut, nobody is watching.
None of which makes privacy free. Sometimes it's worth the difference and sometimes it isn't. That call is yours, not mine, and it's a better call with two written net sheets in front of you, one for each path.
The Bottom Line
Selling well is mostly deciding things on purpose. What you pay, what you spend, what you contribute, how publicly you market. Every one of those is a choice with a number attached, and every number belongs in writing before you sign.
Selling somewhere in the two to five million range and want the real number before you commit to anything? That is the first conversation I have with every seller. Bring your questions. → gemmawillans.com/sellers
