The FSBO Savings Calculator: How Much Will You Actually Keep?

I want you to do something before you read the rest of this post. Pull up your phone’s calculator. Type in what you think your house is worth. Multiply it by 0.05 or 0.06.

That number? That’s what a traditional real estate agent expects you to hand over at closing. Not for the house. Not for the land. Just for the privilege of having someone list it on a website you could list it on yourself. The 2024 NAR settlement removed the old fixed-rate structure, but agents still ask for their full commission — just structured differently now.

The commission table nobody shows you

Agents don’t love talking about their fees in raw dollars. Percentages sound small. Five percent. Six percent. That’s less than sales tax in most states. But five percent of a house is not five percent of a pair of shoes.

The old 6% standard was dismantled by the August 2024 NAR settlement — but don’t expect agents to advertise that. Many still quote the same numbers, just with different labels. “Listing commission” here, “buyer concession” there. The total is often the same. The math below still applies.

Here’s what traditional agent commissions actually look like:

Sale Price	5% Commission	6% Commission	What That Money Could Be
$200,000	$10,000	$12,000	A used car that runs great for 5 years
$300,000	$15,000	$18,000	A full kitchen renovation
$400,000	$20,000	$24,000	A year of in-state college tuition
$500,000	$25,000	$30,000	A 20% down payment on a rental property
$750,000	$37,500	$45,000	More than the median American earns in a year
$1,000,000	$50,000	$60,000	A luxury car. Sitting in someone else’s driveway.

Read that column on the right again. That’s your equity walking out the door.

”But FSBO isn’t free”

You’re right. It isn’t. And anyone who tells you it costs nothing to sell FSBO is either lying or hasn’t done it. There are real costs. They’re just dramatically smaller than what you’d pay an agent.

Here’s what I actually spent when I sold FSBO:

Real estate attorney: $500 - $3,000. This is your most important expense, and it’s non-negotiable in my book. A real estate attorney handles the purchase agreement, reviews the title, manages the closing paperwork, and protects you legally. An agent does not do these things. Or if they do, they’re practicing law without a license. Most straightforward sales land in the $500-$1,500 range. My attorney cost $800 and earned every penny.

Professional photography: $150 - $250. Hire a real estate photographer. Do not take photos with your phone. The photographer I used charged $200, spent 90 minutes in the house, and delivered 45 edited photos by the next morning. Best $200 I ever spent.

Flat fee MLS listing: $100 - $500. If you want your listing syndicated to Realtor.com, Redfin, and the other agent-facing sites, a flat fee MLS service gets you there. Not always necessary. Zillow lets you list FSBO directly in most markets. But it’s an option.

That’s it. That’s the list. Total FSBO costs: roughly $750 to $3,750.

The real math: what you actually keep

Let’s run the numbers side by side. I’ll use the middle of the FSBO cost range, call it $1,500, to keep things honest.

For the examples below, assume FSBO costs include a $1,500 attorney fee, $250 for photography, and a 1% seller-paid buyer-agent commission.

Home Price	Agent Commission (6%)	FSBO Costs	FSBO Savings
$300,000	$18,000	$4,750	$13,250
$500,000	$30,000	$6,750	$23,250
$800,000	$48,000	$9,750	$38,250

On a $200,000 home:

• Agent commission: $12,000
• FSBO costs: $1,500
• You keep an extra $10,500

That’s a solid emergency fund. Or six months of car payments. Gone if you hand it to an agent.

On a $300,000 home:

• Agent commission: $18,000
• FSBO costs: $1,500
• You keep an extra $16,500

Ask yourself: how many months would you have to work to save $16,500 after taxes? For most people, the answer is somewhere between eight months and a year.

On a $400,000 home:

• Agent commission: $24,000
• FSBO costs: $1,500
• You keep an extra $22,500

Twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a year of your kid’s college tuition. That’s the down payment that gets you into a better house on the buy side. That’s your money.

On a $500,000 home:

• Agent commission: $30,000
• FSBO costs: $1,500
• You keep an extra $28,500

On a $750,000 home:

• Agent commission: $45,000
• FSBO costs: $1,500
• You keep an extra $43,500

At this price point, the commission is more than most Americans earn in a year. You’re writing a check larger than many people’s annual salary, for a service that takes a few dozen hours of work spread over a few weeks.

On a $1,000,000 home:

• Agent commission: $60,000
• FSBO costs: $1,500
• You keep an extra $58,500

Fifty-eight thousand dollars. Let that sit for a second.

What about the buyer’s agent?

This is where people get tripped up. “Even if I sell FSBO, don’t I still have to pay the buyer’s agent 2.5-3%?”

Short answer: no. Since the August 2024 NAR settlement, sellers have no default obligation to pay the buyer’s agent anything. There is no longer an MLS field where sellers offer buyer-side compensation — that requirement was eliminated. Buyers sign written agreements with their agents that spell out what the agent earns and who pays for it. The buyer handles that negotiation with their own agent. It is not automatically your cost.

That said, many buyers still come with agents, and some of those agents will ask whether you’re offering a concession toward their fee. You have options. You can offer something. You can offer nothing. You can negotiate based on the full offer package.

One seller I know offered 0.5% instead of the old “standard” 3%. The buyer’s agent took it because half a percent of a closed deal beats 3% of nothing. On a $400,000 house, that’s the difference between paying $12,000 (at 3%) and paying $2,000 (at 0.5%). That’s $10,000 saved on a single negotiation.

Even if you choose to offer a full 2.5-3% as a concession to attract buyers, you’re still saving the entire listing-agent side. On a $400,000 house at a traditional 6% split, skipping the listing agent alone saves you $12,000 minimum.

The key shift is that this is now a choice, not a default. The savings calculator below lets you model every scenario.

The question you should be asking

Stop asking “Can I sell my house without an agent?” You already know the answer is yes. Thousands of people do it every year.

The real question is: what would you do with an extra $10,000, $20,000, or $50,000?

Would you put it toward the down payment on your next home? Pay off a chunk of student loans? Fund your kid’s college account? Keep it in savings so you can sleep better at night?

That money exists right now, inside the equity you’ve built. The only question is whether you’re going to keep it or hand it to a stranger who will spend a few hours on Zillow and a few more hours at your kitchen table.

Calculate your FSBO savings

Stop doing mental math. Plug in your numbers and see exactly what you keep at every commission level.

That’s your money. Not a rounding error. Not a “cost of doing business.” Your equity, earned over years, and you get to decide how much of it walks out the door.

What the scenarios mean post-NAR settlement

Before the August 2024 NAR settlement, offering 2.5-3% to the buyer’s agent was functionally mandatory. Sellers who didn’t offer it risked agents steering buyers away from their listings. That structural coercion is gone. The MLS no longer contains any field for seller-paid buyer-agent compensation. Buyers sign written agreements with their agents, and the buyer is responsible for their agent’s fee — not you by default.

Here’s what that changes in practice:

0% buyer-agent concession is now a real option, not a theoretical one. Some buyers hire agents on flat-fee or hourly arrangements. Others pay their agent directly per their written agreement. If the buyer handles their own agent’s cost, your only expenses are your FSBO costs — attorney, photos, MLS listing. On a $400,000 house, you might spend $1,500 total and keep $22,500 more than you would have with a traditional agent.

0.5-1% is where many post-settlement negotiations are landing when sellers choose to offer something. It signals good faith and often keeps motivated buyers in the deal, while keeping your savings substantial. On that same $400,000 house at 1%, your total cost is $5,500 versus $24,000 with a traditional agent. You keep $18,500.

2-3% still happens, and sometimes it makes sense — especially if it’s built into a strong offer price. But it is a deliberate choice now, not an industry default you’re expected to absorb. If a buyer’s agent tells you sellers “always” offer 2.5-3%, that hasn’t been true since August 2024.

The point of the calculator above isn’t to tell you what to offer. It’s to make sure you know exactly what each decision costs you, in real dollars, so you can negotiate from a position of knowledge instead of guesswork.

If you’re ready to keep your equity, the next step is figuring out your home’s actual market value. Here’s exactly how to price your home without a Realtor using the same data agents use, for free. And for the full breakdown of how commissions work and why the math never favors sellers, read how real estate commissions actually work.