Seller net sheet: the number you actually walk away with

Sellers tend to anchor on the sale price and get surprised at the table. The price is the top line, but the wire is the price after a stack of deductions comes off: whatever it takes to pay off the existing loans, the commission written into the listing agreement, the closing costs the contract puts on the seller, and the day-of prorations. A net sheet is the arithmetic that turns the headline number into the one that matters, and it is worth running early, because the deductions are where the surprises live.

Use the tool the way a listing agent would use a worksheet before a pricing conversation. Enter the numbers you have from your own paperwork, add the line items your deal carries and remove the ones it does not, and read the itemized result. It updates as you type. Everything below the tool explains what each part is, where the real figure comes from at closing, and why one of these inputs trips people every time.

It is an estimate, and the settlement statement is the record. A net sheet is a planning worksheet: a reasonable projection built from the numbers you have in hand. The controlling document is the settlement statement (often still called a HUD or ALTA statement) that the closing office produces, and for the buyer’s loan there is also the Closing Disclosure, which federal law requires the lender to deliver at least three business days before closing. Those documents assemble the figures from the source paperwork; a net sheet approximates them ahead of time. When the statement arrives, this estimate is what you check it against, not the reverse.

It is only as good as the figures you feed it. A net sheet inherits every estimate you put into it. If the payoff is a guess, the tax proration is a placeholder, or a seller credit gets negotiated in after you ran the numbers, the net moves. That is not a flaw in the arithmetic; it is the nature of estimating a number whose inputs are still settling. The value is in seeing the shape of the deduction stack early enough to plan around it, and in having something concrete to reconcile against later.

This is the input that trips sellers most, so it earns its own section. The number in your banking app is the balance: the principal still owed as of a statement date. The number a net sheet needs is the payoff: the full amount it takes to release the lender’s lien on the exact day the loan is paid. The payoff is larger because it adds the interest that has accrued since your last payment, quoted per day, plus any recording, wire, or statement fees the loan charges to close it out.

Two practical consequences follow. First, a payoff is quoted good through a specific date, and if closing slips, the number changes as more per-diem interest accrues. Second, if you have a second mortgage or a HELOC, each carries its own payoff and its own lien to release, so both belong in the stack. Pull the written payoff statement from each lender, use those figures rather than the app balances, and check that the good-through date matches your closing.

There is no standard rate, so this tool does not supply one. The commission a seller pays is a negotiated term. It lives in the listing agreement and the purchase contract, and following the changes in industry practice that took effect in 2024, treating any figure as customary is misleading. How a buyer’s agent is compensated is negotiated separately again, in the buyer’s own agreement and in the contract. That is why the commission field starts empty, with no default and no example rate: the only correct number is the one your own agreement states.

Enter that figure as a percent of the price or as a flat amount, whichever your agreement is written in. If the commission is not settled yet, the honest input is no input; leave it blank and treat the resulting net as high until the term is fixed. For a deeper look at how the line is structured, the commission calculator works the same figure from the other direction.

At closing, ongoing costs get split by the day so each side pays for the time it owns the property: property taxes, HOA or condo dues, sometimes prepaid rent or fuel. The net of those splits can go either way. Where taxes are billed in arrears, a seller often owes the buyer for the part of the year already lived in, a debit. Where something was prepaid, the seller may be owed a refund, a credit. Because the direction depends on how items are billed and how your contract and locality handle them, this tool takes one signed proration figure and lets you set whether it credits or debits the seller.

Getting that one number right is its own small piece of arithmetic. Compute the net with the proration calculator, which handles the day-count and the arrears-versus-advance question, then bring the single net figure back here. The method varies by contract and place, so the proration on the settlement statement is the one that governs.

The controlling net sheet is prepared by the closing office: the settlement agent, title company, or closing attorney handling the file, depending on where the property is. They build it from the payoff statements, the signed agreements, the county tax and recording data, and their own fee schedule, and they issue the settlement statement that says what gets wired. An agent may give you an estimated net sheet early to help you price and plan; the calculator above does the same job, on your own numbers. Both are estimates. The document from the closing office is the one to trust for the amount. For the fuller picture of how a sale moves from listing to that table, see the seller timeline and the residential closing process.

A net sheet is a number you re-figure as a deal changes, and a deal changes constantly: an amendment moves the price, a repair credit gets negotiated, a closing date slips and the payoff and prorations move with it. Ratifyly does not compute your proceeds, your commission, or any accounting figure — that is the closing office’s work, and the numbers here are yours to verify. What it does is keep the paperwork and the dates those figures depend on moving in step. It reads the forwarded paperwork a transaction generates, extracts the parties, the price, and the dates with the counting convention each one runs on, and builds the transaction and its timeline from the documents rather than from re-typing. When an amendment lands, it re-reads the file and re-flows the schedule; a compliance audit checks the file against the paperwork; every party watches one shared live timeline; deadlines escalate before they hit; and a human approves every call. It is in honest early access. The how-it-works page follows the whole path a forwarded email takes.