How Much Will I Keep When I Sell My House in Chicago?

A Chicago home seller keeps the sale price minus four things: the mortgage payoff, about 1 to 2 percent in closing costs, prorated property taxes, and the listing fee. On a $500,000 sale with a $300,000 payoff, that is about $181,500 with an example 2.5 percent listing fee and about $192,000 with Net Gain Realty’s flat $1,995 listing fee, before prorations and before any contribution to a buyer’s agent. The payoff is fixed. The closing costs are small and mostly set by law or custom. The listing fee is the one large line a seller chooses, and it is the line this page measures against the money that is actually yours.

All figures on this page are estimates for informational purposes only. Commission rates are negotiable and vary by brokerage. Closing costs, transfer taxes, and fees are approximate and depend on your transaction. Net Gain Realty makes no guarantees regarding sale price, net proceeds, or savings. Illinois closings involve an attorney; consult yours before making real estate decisions.

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The walk from sale price to your wire

The example below uses a $500,000 sale, the same figure the calculator opens with and a little above the citywide median of $395,000 in Midwest Real Estate Data’s June 2026 report. The seller in this example still owes $300,000. Cook County custom puts the owner’s title policy on the seller, Illinois closings run through attorneys rather than escrow companies, and the seller’s share of transfer taxes is about 0.45 percent of the sale price. Where a line is a range, the total uses its midpoint.

Line	Amount
Sale price	$500,000
Mortgage payoff (this example)	− $300,000
Your equity	$200,000
Transfer taxes, seller’s share (about 0.45%)	− $2,250
Owner’s title insurance policy (seller custom)	− $2,750
Attorney fee	− $500 to $1,000
Recording and miscellaneous	− $110 to $250
Prorated property taxes (Cook County bills in arrears)	varies by closing month
Listing fee at an example 2.5%	− $12,500
What lands in the account, example 2.5% listing fee	about $181,500
What lands in the account, Net Gain Realty’s flat $1,995	about $192,000

Two of those lines deserve a note. The prorated tax credit is the line that surprises Chicago sellers most, because Cook County collects property taxes a year behind and the seller credits the buyer for the months already lived in; the Chicago seller net sheet walks through it. And the listing fee is the only line on the table that a seller sets with one decision before the home lists. Everything above it is either the bank’s money or a fee fixed by statute or by market rate.

Commission rates shown are examples, are not set by law, and are fully negotiable.

Your equity is not your sale price

Sellers plan around the number on the sign. The bank’s payoff comes out of that number first, and what is left is the only money that was ever yours: the down payment, every principal payment, and the appreciation you waited for. In the example above, that is $200,000 of a $500,000 sale.

Traditionally, the listing fee has been quoted as a percentage of the sale price. It is paid out of the equity. Those are two different numbers, and only one of them belongs to the seller.

“That fee is quoted on the sale price. But it is paid out of your equity. Two different numbers. Only one of them is yours.”

Matthew McMahon, Managing Broker, Net Gain Realty

The listing fee as a share of your check: the fee-to-equity ratio

The fee-to-equity ratio is the listing fee divided by your equity. It is the real rate a seller pays, and it is almost always higher than the percentage that was quoted, because the percentage was quoted on the larger number.

Here is the same $500,000 sale with the same example 2.5 percent fee of $12,500, at four different mortgage balances. The fee never changes. Only the equity does.

You still owe	Your equity	Example 2.5% fee ($12,500) as a share of equity	Net Gain Realty’s $1,995 as a share of equity
$250,000	$250,000	5.0%	0.8%
$300,000	$200,000	6.25%	1.0%
$400,000	$100,000	12.5%	2.0%
$450,000	$50,000	25%	4.0%

A percentage listing fee charges the highest real rate to the sellers who have built the least. A flat fee breaks the link: it does not grow with the price and it does not take a bigger bite as equity shrinks. The definition, the formula, and the original worked example live on the fee-to-equity ratio page.

Why this bites harder in Illinois

Equity is thinner here than in most of the country. ATTOM’s first-quarter 2026 home equity report found that 33.5 percent of mortgaged Illinois homes were equity-rich, meaning the loan balance was half the value or less, against 43.3 percent of mortgaged homes nationally. Read the other way, roughly two of every three mortgaged Illinois homes are still majority-owned by the lender, and for every one of them the fee-to-equity ratio is at least double the quoted rate. Nationally, the Census Bureau reports that about 40 percent of owner-occupied homes carry no mortgage; for those sellers the ratio equals the quoted rate, and this page is simply a net sheet.

Two Chicago situations sit at the high end of the table, worked on the seller’s own numbers rather than as a claim about how often they occur:

• A home bought in the last few years with 10 percent down. A $500,000 purchase in 2022 or 2023 with $50,000 down and a few years of amortization leaves a payoff near $435,000 and equity near $65,000. An example 2.5 percent fee of $12,500 is about 19 percent of that equity. A flat $1,995 is about 3 percent.
• A downtown or North Side condo bought when prices were flat. A $300,000 condo bought in 2017 with 10 percent down and nine years of payments leaves a payoff near $225,000 and equity near $75,000. An example 2.5 percent fee of $7,500 is 10 percent of that equity. A flat $1,995 is about 2.7 percent.

The home sale calculator runs any of these on your exact price and payoff.

What moves the number, and what does not

Three of the lines on a Chicago closing statement are fixed or nearly so. Transfer taxes are set by the state, the county, and the city. Title premiums and attorney fees move by a few hundred dollars between providers. The prorated tax credit is arithmetic on the closing date.

One line moves by five figures with a single decision. Traditionally, the listing side has been charged as a percentage in the 2 to 3 percent range. Net Gain Realty charges a flat $1,995 for the full listing scope: pricing from local comparable sales, professional photography, MLS listing and syndication, showing coordination, offer negotiation, and transaction management through closing. The scope tracks the home, not the price tag, and the fee is stated in writing before the listing agreement is signed. On the example sale, the difference between those two structures is about $10,500 of the seller’s own equity. On an $800,000 sale it is about $18,000.

Net Gain Realty is not the right fit for every sale. The flat fee works best for sellers who price from day one against recent closed sales and who want to keep their equity rather than pay for a percentage model they do not need. In a slow market with long days on market, or on a property that needs heavy hands-on work before it can list, a different conversation may be the right one, and the three ways to sell a house in Chicago page lays out all of the options side by side.

Buyer-agent compensation since the settlement

Since the 2024 NAR settlement, buyer-agent compensation is negotiated offer by offer instead of posted in the MLS. Many Chicago sellers still choose to contribute to it to strengthen a deal, and that contribution comes out of the same proceeds. It is a real cost and it is a separate decision from the listing fee. Everything on this page is about the listing side, which is the side a seller controls before the home ever lists. How realtors get paid in Chicago covers both sides in detail.

Run your own numbers

The What You Keep calculator from Net Gain Realty at the top of this page estimates every line above on your sale price and your payoff: transfer taxes, title, attorney, prorated taxes, and the listing fee shown two ways. It returns what lands in the account under each structure, side by side, and it shows the listing fee as a share of your equity, which is the number this page exists to make visible.

Related guides

• Chicago seller net sheet, every line between your sale price and your wire
• The fee-to-equity ratio, defined
• Cost to sell a house in Chicago, with the commission and closing cost calculator
• Illinois seller closing costs, line by line
• How much of your equity a realtor commission really takes
• Three ways to sell a house in Chicago

Sources: ATTOM Data Solutions, Q1 2026 U.S. Home Equity and Underwater Report (Illinois 33.5 percent equity-rich, national 43.3 percent); U.S. Census Bureau, “Nearly 40% of U.S. Homeowners Did Not Have a Mortgage in 2024” (January 2026); Midwest Real Estate Data, June 2026 market report (Chicago citywide median sale price $395,000). Transfer tax, title, attorney, and recording figures are the same estimates used across Net Gain Realty’s Chicago cost pages. Figures current as of September 5, 2026.