What a listing fee should cost in 2026

Percentages made sense when every home cost $150,000

A percentage is a reasonable way to price something when the price of the thing tracks the effort. For most of the twentieth century that was roughly true of houses: prices moved with wages, the spread between a cheap home and an expensive one in the same town was narrow, and 2.5% or 3% of either came to a few thousand dollars. On a $150,000 home, 2.5% is $3,750.

Then prices left wages behind. The median agent-assisted sale in NAR’s 2025 survey was $425,000; in the metros where most Americans live it is well above that. The same 2.5% is now $10,625 on the median home and $22,500 on a $900,000 one. The agent’s hours, the photographer’s invoice and the MLS fee did not move with the price. The percentage stopped tracking effort and started tracking the housing market, which is a different thing to pay for.

Sellers noticed. The share who tried to sell without an agent fell to 5% in 2025, the lowest NAR has ever recorded, not because the commission stopped hurting but because going alone hurt more: the median owner-sold home went for $360,000 against $425,000 with an agent. The demand is for the agent at a price that reflects the work, not for no agent.

What the listing side actually costs an agent

Strip the listing side down to what an agent spends to do it well and the list is short. Professional photography, typically a few hundred dollars for a standard shoot. The MLS entry, lockbox and signage, covered by association dues an agent pays once a year across every listing. Pricing work: a comparative market analysis and a walk-through. Then time: preparing the home and the listing, showings and open houses, fielding and negotiating offers, and the contract-to-close work with inspectors, appraisers, lenders and the title company or notary. On an ordinary listing that is a few dozen hours of skilled work plus a few hundred dollars of hard cost.

That is worth paying for properly. Skilled hours, local knowledge and the liability of getting the disclosures right are why the agent-assisted home sells for more. But it prices out in the thousands, not the tens of thousands. A flat fee in the $4,999 to $19,999 range pays a licensed local agent a real net for the work; a 2.5% fee on a $900,000 home pays them $22,500 for the same work plus the price of the house.

Why flat, and why it steps by price band

If the work were identical at every price a single flat fee would do. It is not quite identical. Larger and more expensive homes take more showings and more marketing, sit on the market longer, attract more complicated offers and carry more liability in the paperwork. A fee that steps up modestly with price, in whole-dollar bands the seller can see, reflects that without turning back into a percentage.

The rule behind the table is simple enough to check by hand: each band’s fee is 1% of the band’s starting price minus a dollar, with a floor of $4,999 and a cap of $19,999. Every fee ends in 999, and from $500,000 up every fee is under 1% of the price. The band is set from the higher of the price the seller expects and a third-party estimate of the home’s value, so nobody games it downward, and it is written into the agreement before the seller meets an agent. If the home is eventually listed in a higher band, the fee follows the schedule; it never rises after the home is listed.

The counter rule

A flat fee is only honest if the seller can trust it. So the rule on agents proposing something different is strict and public. Under $500,000 the quoted fee is final: an agent accepts it or does not respond. From $500,000 an agent may propose a higher amount before the seller chooses them, with a reason, capped at the largest amount ending in 499 or 999 that is still under 1% of the expected price. On a $650,000 home the quoted fee is $5,999 and the most any agent can propose is $6,499; on a $700,000 home the band fee is already $6,999 and there is no room at all. The seller sees any proposal first and can simply wait for an agent who accepts the quote. Agents who accept are hired far more often than agents who counter, and the guidance they see tells them so.

Media as a menu, not a bundle

One argument for the percentage is that expensive homes need expensive marketing: aerial video, twilight photography, a 3D floor plan, a printed brochure. True, sometimes. The wrong conclusion is that every seller should pay for it inside a percentage whether or not their home needs it. Standard listing photos belong in the base service. Beyond that, listing media should be a menu: drone, video, a 3D floor plan and more, arranged by the agent, priced upfront, paid through the platform, and never required. A seller with a photogenic house buys the drone shoot; a seller with a tidy condo does not, and neither of them funds the other through a percentage.

Buyers: the same bands, on the purchase price

The 2024 settlement made the buyer’s agent a separate, negotiated line. It did not make it cheaper: Redfin’s data put the average buyer-side commission at 2.40% in the first quarter of 2025, and the Federal Reserve Board’s May 2025 note on agent commissions found little movement in rates in the settlement’s first year. The same logic applies on this side. A buyer’s agent does a defined amount of work: searches, tours, an offer, negotiation, contract to close. That work prices out in the same bands, applied to the price of the home the buyer actually buys.

In practice the seller still usually contributes toward the buyer’s agent, because it sells the house. When that contribution is larger than the buyer’s flat fee, the difference should go back to the buyer at closing. On the median home a 2.40% contribution is about $10,200; the buyer’s fee in that band is $4,999, and the remaining $5,201 is the buyer’s, where state law allows a rebate. A small number of states still restrict rebates, and in those the contribution is applied as the law permits. The point stands either way: the fee follows the home’s price band, not a percentage that rewards the agent for a higher purchase price.

What a fair fee looks like, in one paragraph

A flat dollar amount, in writing, before the seller or buyer meets the agent. Set from the home’s price band so it steps up modestly with the work, never a percentage, under 1% on any home over $500,000. Agents may propose a change only above $500,000, only under 1%, and only before the client chooses. Standard photos included; everything beyond them a priced menu. Non-exclusive, cancel any time, paid only at closing. That is the fee Landian charges, and this is the reasoning behind each part of it.

Footnotes and sources

1. National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (November 2025): for-sale-by-owner share 5% of sales; median FSBO sale price $360,000 against $425,000 for agent-assisted sales; 88% of buyers purchased through an agent.
2. National Association of Realtors, existing-home sales series: the national median existing-home price was under $150,000 in the early 2000s. Rounded here for the comparison.
3. Redfin, buyer-agent commission analysis (2025): average buyer-side commission of 2.40% in the first quarter of 2025.
4. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FEDS Notes on real estate agent commissions after the NAR settlement (May 2025).
5. Landian fee schedule and counter rule as published on landian.co and in the Client Brokerage Agreement, September 2026. Fees are in US dollars; the same numbers apply in Canadian dollars in Canada. A published comparison with six national services, with sources, is at landian.co/blog/flat-fee-vs-1-percent.
6. Listing-side cost estimates (photography, dues, hours) are national rules of thumb, not a survey; they vary by market and by home.