A Kirkland homeowner calculates net proceeds by starting with the sale price and subtracting, in order, commission, seller closing costs, any repair credits, carrying costs, and finally the mortgage payoff, because each subtraction answers a different question about the sale. At the sample prices used in this set, commission at the typical 5 to 6 percent removes 52,500 to 63,000 dollars from a 1,050,000 dollar price (National Association of Realtors, 2025). Seller closing costs at 1 to 2 percent, covering title, the Washington excise tax, and prorations, remove a further slice (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026). Repair credits of 10,000 to 25,000 dollars and carrying costs of 15,000 to 35,000 dollars over a normal 98033 selling period complete the transaction picture (Frontier Capitals, 2026). The mortgage payoff, which includes interest and charges through the payoff date and is not the same as the statement balance (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026), is then subtracted to reach the amount the household actually keeps. Run honestly, that worksheet explains why a 1,050,000 dollar list price nets in the low 900,000s before payoff in this sample, and an 850,000 dollar price nets in the mid 700,000s.
Key Findings
- Net proceeds equal price minus commission, closing costs, credits, carrying costs, and mortgage payoff, in that working order.
- Commission is the largest percentage line at 5 to 6 percent, or 45,000 to 54,000 dollars on a 900,000 dollar sale (National Association of Realtors, 2025).
- Seller closing costs add 1 to 2 percent, and the excise tax within them follows the state affidavit filed at recording (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026).
- The payoff figure must be requested for a specific date, because it includes interest and charges beyond the statement balance (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026).
- A 1,050,000 dollar sample sale nets in the low 900,000s of dollars before payoff, and an 850,000 dollar sale nets in the mid 700,000s, before any price reduction (Frontier Capitals, 2026).
What is the correct order for the worksheet, and why does order matter?
Order matters because each line belongs to a different category, and mixing categories produces the optimistic errors sellers make in their heads. The first two lines are percentages of price, and they are certain in any listed sale: commission at 5 to 6 percent and closing costs at 1 to 2 percent (National Association of Realtors, 2025). A seller can compute both in under a minute for any candidate price, and should, before falling in love with that price. The next two lines are situational: repair credits, which depend on inspection, and carrying costs, which depend on calendar. The final line, the payoff, is personal: it depends on the household loan and on nothing about the market at all. A worksheet that respects those categories can be updated line by line as facts arrive, instead of being rebuilt from hope each week.
Escrow is where the worksheet becomes official. Washington closings run through licensed escrow, which collects the payoff figure, itemizes commission and closing charges, and disburses the remainder to the seller when the deed records (Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, 2026). Comparing your worksheet with the estimated settlement statement escrow prepares is the single best error check available to a seller, because any line you forgot will be sitting there in print. Deed recording then closes the loop, creating the public record of the transaction your worksheet predicted (King County Recorder's Office, 2026). Sellers who keep both documents can reconstruct their sale years later for tax basis and records.
One distinction belongs at the top of every worksheet: proceeds are not profit. Proceeds are what the sale deposits after the subtractions above. Profit, or gain, compares the amount realized with the households basis, and it belongs to the tax calculation, where Publication 523 allows an exclusion of up to 250,000 dollars, or 500,000 dollars jointly, when the ownership and use tests are met (Internal Revenue Service, 2025). A household can have large proceeds and modest gain, or modest proceeds and a taxable gain, depending on basis and borrowing history. This post calculates proceeds; the gain question is handled in whether Kirkland homeowners pay capital gains taxes when selling.
How does the worksheet run at the sample Kirkland prices?
At 850,000 dollars the arithmetic runs as follows. Commission removes 42,500 to 51,000 dollars. Closing costs at 1 to 2 percent remove about 8,500 to 17,000 dollars. A mid range inspection credit and a few months of carrying costs at the older ranch pattern, 18,000 to 40,000 dollars for homes that sit three to six months in 98034, pull the figure down toward the sample observation for this price: net proceeds in the mid 700,000s of dollars before payoff and before any reduction (Frontier Capitals, 2026). At 900,000 dollars, commission alone is 45,000 to 54,000 dollars, and the set notes that commission plus closing costs on an 850,000 dollar sale commonly exceed 55,000 dollars, a warning that the two percentage lines together behave like a second mortgage payment book (National Association of Realtors, 2025).
At 1,050,000 dollars the same structure produces the low 900,000s net quoted across this set, and the composition is worth memorizing because it recurs at every price. Roughly 6 to 8 percent leaves as the transaction toll, a further few percent leaves as credits and time, and the payoff then takes whatever the household still owes. Commission reporting since the industry settlement suggests no rescue is coming from that line, since agent pay has remained broadly stable in the reporting (Redfin, 2025). Recent sold prices for older homes and new construction in the two ZIP codes let a seller test the starting price itself against the street before any subtraction begins (Redfin, 2026). A worksheet built on a fantasy list price is fiction no matter how careful the subtractions are.
Reductions deserve a line of their own, even though they arrive disguised as a new price. National data for September 2026 showed 27.4 percent of listings taking price cuts with a median 29 days to pending (Zillow, 2026), and a Kirkland seller who cuts 40,000 dollars to revive a listing has spent that amount exactly as surely as if it were a fee. The clean way to handle reductions on the worksheet is to rerun the whole calculation at the reduced price, percentages included, rather than subtracting the cut from an old net. Percentages shrink slightly at the lower price, which softens the blow by a few thousand dollars, but the direction is unmistakable.
Which inputs do sellers most often get wrong?
The payoff is the most common error, because the statement balance feels authoritative and is not. The payoff includes interest and charges through the payoff date, so it is higher than the balance, and it changes if the closing date moves (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026). Request the dated figure from the lender or through escrow as soon as a sale becomes real, and refresh it if the calendar slips. The second error is omitting carrying costs entirely. Two to four months of mortgage or equity cost, insurance, taxes, utilities, and maintenance on a 98033 home total 15,000 to 35,000 dollars in the sample work, and those dollars leave the household whether or not they appear on the settlement statement (Frontier Capitals, 2026).
The third error is budgeting commission at a hoped for rate. The documented typical range for the Seattle metro in this set is 5 to 6 percent (National Association of Realtors, 2025), and a worksheet that assumes 4 percent because a cousin negotiated it elsewhere understates the largest line by about 10,000 dollars per 1,000,000 dollars of price. The fourth error is forgetting the excise tax inside closing costs, or counting it twice: it sits inside the 1 to 2 percent seller closing band and follows the affidavit filed at recording (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026), so it belongs on the worksheet once. The fifth error is comparing a listed gross price with a direct net offer. Every comparison in this post is net against net, at a stated date, with a stated certainty, because that is the only comparison that respects the sellers money.
Sellers can audit their own worksheet with three documents: the listing agreement for the commission rate, the estimated settlement statement from escrow for the closing lines (Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, 2026), and the dated payoff letter for the loan (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026). If a number on the worksheet cannot be traced to one of those documents or to the sample ranges cited here, it is a guess, and guesses should be labeled as such before a household spends against them. That labeling habit is also what makes negotiations calmer, since every party can see which figures are facts and which are hopes.
How does the worksheet change for a direct off market sale?
A direct sale does not repeal arithmetic; it removes lines from the worksheet, and the five benefits can be entered as zeros where the listed sale carried charges. Where privacy is concerned, the direct route has no showings, no open houses, and no public marketing period, so there is no marketing spend and no street level audience for the households plans. On timing, a closing at 7 to 21 days, or months out with a leaseback, replaces the drifting 60 to 120 plus day listed calendar, which caps both carrying costs and payoff drift. The commission line becomes zero instead of 5 to 6 percent. The seller closing cost line becomes zero instead of 1 to 2 percent, as the direct terms in this set are structured. The repair credit line becomes zero, because the sale is as is and no inspection renegotiation follows, sparing the 10,000 to 30,000 dollar credits older homes often concede.
Enter those zeros honestly and the comparison explains itself: a direct bid below a list price can deposit equal or higher net proceeds, because the listed price still owes its percentages while the direct price does not. The intermediary role should be entered on the worksheet as a fact as well. Frontier Capitals sources off market deals to builders, buys directly from sellers, and places each deal with a vetted builder; it never claims to be a builder itself, and its offer is a purchase price, not a construction estimate. Sellers can request that a direct figure be run through this exact worksheet via the coverage page or the contact details in the conclusion, and can compare the result with the kept amount illustrated in how much a seller keeps after selling a 1.5 million dollar Kirkland home.
Can the worksheet be run in full at a 900,000 dollar price?
Yes, and doing it once at a round local price teaches the method better than any description. Start at 900,000 dollars. Subtract commission at the documented range, 45,000 to 54,000 dollars (National Association of Realtors, 2025). Subtract closing costs at 1 to 2 percent, which is 9,000 to 18,000 dollars and includes the excise tax counted once (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026). Subtract an inspection credit inside the common older home band, somewhere between 10,000 and 25,000 dollars, and subtract carrying costs for the selling period, between 15,000 and 35,000 dollars at the 98033 pattern in the sample (Frontier Capitals, 2026). The arithmetic lands at roughly 768,000 to 821,000 dollars before the mortgage payoff, with the low end pairing the high cost assumptions and the high end pairing the low ones. From that span, subtract the dated payoff, remembering that it exceeds the statement balance by interest and charges to the payoff date (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026). The figure that survives is the households planning number.
Notice what that exercise reveals about negotiation. A 20,000 dollar improvement in price at this level adds about 18,400 to 18,800 dollars of proceeds after the percentage lines take their share, while a one month saving in time on market can add a comparable amount through avoided carrying costs and a frozen payoff. Sellers who see both levers on one page negotiate differently: they trade price for speed, or speed for price, with the exchange rate in front of them instead of discovering it at the settlement table.
Methodology and limitations
The worksheet in this post uses only the ranges documented for this set: commission of 5 to 6 percent in the Seattle metro (National Association of Realtors, 2025), supported by post settlement commission reporting (Redfin, 2025), seller closing costs of 1 to 2 percent including excise tax and affidavit practice (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026), escrow itemization and disbursement practice (Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, 2026), the payoff definition (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026), credit and carrying ranges and net observations from the 104 home sample with 16 builder acquisitions (Frontier Capitals, 2026), recent sold context (Redfin, 2026), price cut and pending time context (Zillow, 2026), recording practice (King County Recorder's Office, 2026), and the proceeds versus gain distinction under Publication 523 (Internal Revenue Service, 2025). Every households actual worksheet will differ in its payoff, its negotiated commission, and its time on market, and no net figure in this post predicts an individual result. No title search, inspection, appraisal, or tax preparation was performed for any reader, and tax on gain, where it applies, is calculated after proceeds and outside this worksheet.
Conclusion
Net proceeds are calculated, never guessed: price, minus 5 to 6 percent commission, minus 1 to 2 percent closing costs, minus credits and carrying costs, minus the dated mortgage payoff. At Kirkland prices that discipline turns a 1,050,000 dollar headline into the low 900,000s before payoff, and it turns every offer, listed or direct, into a comparable kept figure. To have the worksheet run with your real payoff and price, call 401-219-4207 or write to [email protected]. If you ran your own numbers tonight, line by line, which subtraction would change your asking price first?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the first number a seller needs for the worksheet?
A realistic price, tested against recent sold homes in the same ZIP code rather than against asking prices (Redfin, 2026). Every percentage line scales from that starting figure, so an inflated start corrupts the whole calculation.
Should carrying costs really be subtracted if they are paid monthly anyway?
Yes, because they are real money spent to hold the home until sale, totaling 15,000 to 35,000 dollars over a typical 98033 selling period in the sample (Frontier Capitals, 2026). A faster route that avoids two of those months has saved exactly that amount, whether or not an invoice labels it.
Where does the excise tax appear in the calculation?
Inside seller closing costs, within the 1 to 2 percent band, following the affidavit and schedule the state requires at recording (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026). Count it once, in that band, and do not add it again as a separate tax line in the proceeds worksheet.
Why does escrow matter to a sellers own calculation?
Because escrow produces the settlement statement that itemizes commission, closing charges, and the payoff before disbursing the remainder (Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, 2026). Comparing that statement with your worksheet catches omissions while they can still be questioned.
Is net proceeds the same as taxable gain?
No: proceeds are what the sale deposits after the subtractions in this post, while gain compares the amount realized with basis and may be sheltered by the Publication 523 exclusion of up to 250,000 dollars, or 500,000 dollars jointly (Internal Revenue Service, 2025). Keep the two calculations in separate columns.
Sources
- National Association of Realtors, 2025. Typical seller commission structures, Seattle metro market. Industry report.
- Washington State Department of Revenue, 2026. Real estate excise tax rates and affidavit requirements. Government data.
- Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, 2026. Escrow agent licensing and closing practices. Government data.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2026. What is a payoff amount and is it the same as my current balance?. Government data.
- Internal Revenue Service, 2025. Publication 523, Selling Your Home: exclusion up to $250,000 ($500,000 joint); two-of-five-year ownership and use tests. Government data.
- Frontier Capitals, 2026. 189 neighborhood builder acquisition sample: 104 homes sampled in 98033 and 98034, 16 acquired by builders, average older home price 45.2 percent of new build. Market data.
- Redfin, 2026. Recently sold homes and new construction, ZIP codes 98033 and 98034, Kirkland WA. Market data.
- Redfin, 2025. Real estate commissions report. Market data.
- Zillow, 2026. September 2026 market report: 27.4% of listings with price cuts; median 29 days to go pending. Market data.
- King County Recorder's Office, 2026. Deed recording and parcel records for 98033 and 98034. Official record.