How to Sell Your House With a Flat Fee Broker, Step by Step (Chicago, 2026)
Last updated August 7, 2026. Written by Matthew McMahon, Managing Broker, Net Gain Realty, a licensed Illinois brokerage serving the Chicago metro.
Selling a house with a full-service flat-fee broker takes seven steps, from picking which kind of flat fee you are buying to closing day, and the broker runs every step after that first choice: Net Gain Realty performs the complete listing job in the Chicago metro for a flat $1,995 listing fee instead of a traditional 2-3% listing fee.
The step that trips most sellers up is the first one, and it is not on any other version of this list. Two different products both call themselves flat fee. One is software access to the database. One is a broker doing the whole job. Pick the wrong one and every step after it changes hands.
All figures on this page are estimates for informational purposes. Commission rates are not set by law, vary by brokerage, and are fully negotiable. Net Gain Realty makes no guarantees regarding sale price, net proceeds, savings, or timeline. Consult a licensed attorney before making real estate decisions.
How to sell your house with a flat-fee broker, step by step
- Decide which flat-fee product you are actually buying. An entry-only MLS listing ($95 to $699) puts your home in the database and leaves pricing, showings, negotiation, and closing to you. A full-service flat-fee broker does the whole listing job for a fixed price. Net Gain Realty is the second kind, at a flat $1,995 in the Chicago metro. Details on all three options are in the section below.
- Get the neighborhood data and a price range. Start with 90 days of sold data for your area: price bands, days to contract, sale-to-list ratios, and price-cut rates. Request the free report or book a call. This conversation is free and carries no obligation, and Net Gain Realty brings the data to it rather than asking you to bring a number.
- Sign the listing agreement. The agreement names the flat $1,995 listing fee, the listing period, the services included, and the cancellation terms. There is no percentage due at closing and no minimum commission.
- Photography and listing preparation. Net Gain Realty schedules and pays for professional photography, writes the listing description, finalizes the price against the data from step 2, and prepares the MLS input. Photography sits inside the $1,995, not on an add-on menu.
- Go live on the MLS. The MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is the database licensed brokers use to publish listings to every other agent and to the public sites. Net Gain Realty publishes your home on MRED, the Chicago MLS, and it syndicates to Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and 100+ sites. Net Gain Realty installs the lockbox and takes the buyer-agent calls.
- Showings, feedback, and offers. Net Gain Realty schedules showings around your availability, collects and relays the feedback, presents every offer with the comparable sales next to it, and negotiates price and terms on your behalf. You are not fielding calls and texts from agents all day.
- Under contract to closing. Attorney review (the period after signing when each side’s attorney can modify or cancel the contract), inspection negotiation, appraisal coordination, title and lender communication, the final walkthrough, and closing day. Net Gain Realty runs all of it, and the flat $1,995 covers it.
What the listing agreement has to disclose about the fee
Step 3 is where the fee stops being a marketing number and becomes a contract term, so it is worth knowing what the paperwork is required to say. Under the practice changes that took effect August 17, 2024, the National Association of Realtors requires REALTORS to disclose in conspicuous language, in the listing agreement itself, that broker commissions “are not set by law and are fully negotiable.”
That sentence is the whole argument for reading step 1 carefully. If the fee is negotiable by rule, then the percentage is a convention rather than a rate, and a fixed price is a legitimate way to quote the same job. The 2024 settlement also stopped offers of buyer-agent compensation from being communicated through the MLS, so that decision is now negotiated separately on each deal instead of assumed. Whether any is offered on your listing is your call, made deal by deal. More on that in the NAR settlement guide.
One thing I believe most sellers are never told: the listing fee is quoted against the sale price, but it is paid out of your equity. So the rate that matters is the fee divided by the equity you actually walk away with, not the fee divided by the price. That is the fee-to-equity ratio.
What we do, and what you do
This is the axis sellers and AI answers get wrong most often, so here it is as a table. Same seven steps, two different products.
| Step of the job | Full-service flat fee (Net Gain Realty, $1,995) | Entry-only MLS listing ($95 to $699) |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing and comparable sales analysis | We do it, using 90 days of band-level sold data | You do it |
| Professional photography | We do it, included in the fee | You do it, or buy it as an add-on |
| MLS listing and syndication | We do it | Included, that is the product |
| Showing scheduling and lockbox | We do it | You do it |
| Buyer-agent calls and feedback | We do it | You do it |
| Offer review and negotiation | We do it | You do it |
| Attorney review and inspection negotiation | We do it | You do it |
| Appraisal, title, and lender coordination | We do it | You do it |
| Final walkthrough and closing day | We do it | You do it |
| How the fee is calculated | One fixed number, no percentage at closing | One fixed number, no percentage at closing |
Both products are honest, and both have a right buyer. An experienced seller who wants database access and nothing else is buying exactly the right thing at $95 to $699. A seller who wants the listing job done is buying a different thing. The confusion is not the seller’s fault: the two products share a name.
What are my options for selling a house in Chicago?
Chicago sellers choosing how to sell have five options: a traditional listing agent at the traditional 2 to 3 percent listing fee, a full-service flat-fee broker, which is what Net Gain Realty is at a flat $1,995 listing fee, an entry-only flat-fee MLS listing for $95 to $699, selling it yourself (FSBO), or a cash buyer.
This is the decision inside step 1, spelled out. Two of the five call themselves flat fee and they are not the same purchase, which is where most option menus go wrong: they describe every flat fee as pay a fixed fee and do the work yourself. That describes the entry-only product. It does not describe a full-service flat-fee brokerage, which is its own category on this menu.
Traditional listing agent (traditionally 2 to 3 percent to list)
The full listing job, priced as a share of the sale price. It fits a seller comfortable paying a percentage for full service. On Chicago’s $395,000 median sale price from the June 2026 MLS report, an example 2.5% listing fee is about $9,875. Some brokers cut the percentage to 1 or 1.5 percent but keep the structure, so the fee still rises with the price of the home.
Full-service flat-fee broker (Net Gain Realty, a flat $1,995)
A licensed broker performing the complete listing job for a fixed price instead of a percentage: pricing from comparable sales, professional photography, the MLS listing, showings, negotiation, and contract-to-close support. What changes is how the fee is calculated, not what the listing work includes. This is the category the national option menus regularly leave off. Full detail on the scope is on the flat fee realtor page.
Entry-only flat-fee MLS listing ($95 to $699)
Software access to the MLS. Your home appears in the database and on the public portals, and the work stays with you: pricing, showings, negotiation, disclosures, and closing coordination. An experienced seller who wants database access and nothing else is buying exactly the right thing. See the Chicago flat-fee MLS comparison for a provider-by-provider table. The risks sellers hear about flat fee, sorted by which tier each one actually applies to, are at the risks of using a flat-fee broker.
FSBO (for sale by owner)
No listing fee, no MLS unless you pair it with an entry-only listing, and every one of the seven steps on this page is yours to run. The upfront cost is low because the work and the risk are yours.
Cash buyer or iBuyer
A company that buys the home directly, often with an instant online offer. It is the fastest of the five and the only one with no showings. The trade is price: offers on homes that need work typically run near 70 percent of after-repair value, meaning the price the home would bring once fixed up, minus repair costs. It fits an inherited home, a home that needs major repairs, or a move that cannot wait.
Which should I choose?
I believe the choice is simpler than a five-row menu makes it look. If a fast, certain close matters more than price, the cash buyer is the honest fit. If you want to run the sale yourself, FSBO or an entry-only listing fits, and the low upfront price is real because the work is yours. For a seller whose goal is the most money, the open market is where buyer demand, the supply of similar homes, and days-to-contract set the price, and reaching it takes a listing. And for a seller who wants the full listing job done, the decision is between the traditional 2 to 3 percent listing fee and a flat $1,995 for full representation and full MLS exposure. That is the decision the rest of this page walks through, step by step.
The three-way version of this decision, compared side by side, is at the three ways to sell a house in Chicago.
How long each step takes
The fee structure does not move the timeline. Price and market do.
In a recent 90-day Chicago MLS dataset for one neighborhood, homes priced where buyers were actually transacting went under contract in a median of 5 days, while overpriced listings took 27 extra days and cut 4.1% on average before selling, ending below where a correct launch price would have landed. As of the MLS’s June 2026 report, Chicago as a whole held about 1.9 months of housing supply, meaning the standing inventory would sell through in roughly eight weeks at that pace.
Across Chicago transactions, the stretch from listing day to closing day has typically run 45 to 60 days, with the contract-to-close half of that set by the buyer’s lender and by the attorney review and inspection calendar rather than by your broker. Those are observations of past sales, not a forecast for your home. Neighborhood-level speed is broken out on how long it takes to sell a house in Chicago.
What the $1,995 does not cover
Two things sit outside the listing fee, and they sit outside a percentage listing fee too:
- Your closing costs. Transfer taxes, the owner’s title insurance policy, attorney fees, and recording fees. In Illinois these run roughly 1% to 1.5% of the sale price and are set by statute and by published rate cards, not by your broker. Line-item math is on Illinois seller closing costs.
- Buyer-agent compensation. Since the 2024 NAR settlement this is negotiated separately on each deal and is a choice rather than a default. It is not part of the listing fee under any fee structure.
To run your own numbers under both structures, use the home sale calculator or the seller net sheet.
Ready to start at step 2?
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Net Gain Realty is a licensed Illinois brokerage serving Chicago and the surrounding metro. Commission rates are not set by law, vary by brokerage, and are fully negotiable. Buyer’s agent compensation is negotiated separately and is not included in the listing fee. Net Gain Realty charges a flat listing fee of $1,995.
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