Two numbers decide how this sale goes before a sign ever hits the yard. What buyers will pay, and what you actually walk away with. They are not the same number, and they are not close.
Updated October 2026 · Reviewed by The Johnson Team
Strategy Comes Before Showings
Every seller’s first question is the same. Am I about to hear a lowball number, or a sales pitch dressed up as an appraisal? It is a fair thing to worry about, because both happen. An agent who wants your listing badly enough can find comparable sales to support almost any figure, and you have no easy way to tell analysis apart from flattery.
Here is the difference, and it is testable. Analysis explains itself. If an agent tells you what your home is worth, ask how they reached it, ask which competing listings they walked through in person, and ask what happened to the ones that did not sell. An honest answer includes something you did not want to hear. A pitch does not.
The second half of this phase is the part almost nobody asks about until the closing statement, which is too late to change anything. The Johnson Team walks you through both halves up front. Selling costs money, some of it in places that surprise people, and the sale price is not what lands in your account. Both halves live on this page so you can decide with the whole picture instead of half of it.
Part One: Your Pricing Strategy
How We Price a Colorado Springs Home
Two nearly identical homes can carry very different prices a few blocks apart. Broadmoor and Briargate do not move the same way, and a price built off a citywide average will be wrong for both.
So we price your home against its actual competition, not a broad market number. For every relevant sale we look at the original list price, how many times it was reduced and by how much, how long it sat, and what the marketing actually looked like. A home that sold for a strong number after three cuts and ninety days is telling you something completely different from one that sold in a week.
We also walk your competition in person. Photographs are marketing and they are built to flatter. Standing inside a competing home tells us what the buyers who walked away from it actually experienced, which tells us where yours can beat it. There is no reason to repeat the pricing mistake of a listing down the street that already failed to sell.
A Team Behind Your Listing, Not One Agent
Most sellers hand their biggest sale to a single agent juggling dozens of other clients. With us, your listing gets a specialist focused on your sale and a full team working behind them, which is the whole reason the pricing above gets done properly instead of quickly.
Your specialist builds the strategy for your home, and we match you deliberately, pairing your sale with someone who knows your specific area, because the person who understands how homes move on the Westside is not automatically the person who understands Flying Horse or the Broadmoor. Local knowledge is not a slogan here. It is the difference between a price that holds and a price that gets talked down.
Why We Don’t Price Your Home Sight Unseen
Be a little suspicious of any agent who does. An agent who quotes a price before setting foot in your home is pricing a county record, not a house.
They do not know that your primary suite faces the wrong direction, or that the previous owner finished the basement beautifully, or that the lot backs to something a buyer will not love. All of that moves the number, sometimes considerably.
What we do at a first appointment is walk your home the way a buyer will, ask what you are trying to accomplish, and find out what kind of seller you are. Some people are comfortable aiming high and waiting. Others want their equity locked down and the move behind them. Those two sellers should not get the same strategy, and we would rather ask than assume.
Three Ways to Price a Home for Sale
Your list price is the one decision that can make or break this sale. There are three ways to price a home: perceived market value, auction pricing, and aspirational pricing. Choosing the wrong one costs you, either weeks sitting on the market or thousands left at the closing table. The right strategy depends on your home, your timeline, and what the market is doing right now. Matching your home to the right strategy is the core of what we do. We will tell you which one actually fits, and tell you plainly if you are reaching for one that does not.
Perceived Market Value Pricing
Perceived market value pricing sets your price at what genuinely comparable homes have sold for in current conditions, with nothing aspirational built in. It is the strategy behind the large majority of our listings and the one least likely to surprise you in either direction, which is exactly why we reach for it first.
Auction Pricing
Auction pricing sets your price deliberately below market value to spark competition among multiple buyers, aiming to drive the final number above where a market-value listing would have landed. It works, but it takes nerve, the right home, and the right conditions, and it can misfire if the demand you are counting on does not show up.
Aspirational Pricing
Aspirational pricing sets your price above market value, banking on a buyer who values the home differently than the comparable sales suggest. It can work for a genuinely unique property, but it is a gamble on time, and extra days on market erode your negotiating position more than most sellers expect.
Listing Above Market Value: Your Call, Your Risk
It is your home and your risk tolerance, so it is your call. We take our duty of obedience seriously, and that is not a technicality.
If you want to list more aggressively than we would advise, we will generally agree, provided you understand what you are trading for the attempt. Homes get the most attention in their first two weeks. Spending that attention on a number the market will not meet is a real cost, even though it never shows up on a statement.
There is one place we push back hard. If you have a bottom line this market genuinely will not reach, we will tell you plainly rather than take the listing and let you discover it over ninety days. Listing a home costs money and it is not enjoyable to do twice. We are not willing to watch you spend both because we were too uncomfortable to say something at the start.
What’s Worth Fixing Before You List
Buyers decide how they feel about your home in about seven seconds, and most of those seconds happen outside. The opinion forms on the approach: the yard, the walk, the porch, the front door, even the doorknob.
Get that stretch right and buyers spend the rest of the showing looking for reasons to say yes. Get it wrong and they spend it quietly building a case against the house. So we are strategic about which work sits closest to that first impression, and we will not let you overspend on prep that does not return. One pattern holds almost everywhere: buyers overestimate what they are willing to take on outside and underestimate what they could do inside. Fresh mulch and a tidy exterior buy more goodwill than they cost. Inside, paint covers more visual surface than anything else you own, which makes it the cheapest way to change how a room feels.
A home decorated across years of your life is not a flaw, it is just specific, and specific is harder for a stranger to picture themselves inside. Floors are the second-largest visual surface, and there the right move ranges from a clean and a stretch, to replacement, to refinishing hardwood you did not know was under the carpet. Those are different budgets, and we will tell you which one you are in before you start spending. When staging enters the picture, our Marketing Your Home page covers the full range, from a consultation that works with what you already own to full staging for an empty house.
Bottom line: An honest price is built on comparable sales, a walkthrough, and the nerve to tell you a number you might not want to hear. Anything easier than that was built to win your listing, not to sell your home.
Part Two: What It Costs and What You Net
Your Net Sheet: What You Actually Walk Away With
Sale price is a headline. Net proceeds is the fact. A net sheet is a line-by-line projection of what you actually walk away with: the sale price, minus the payoff on your loan and any other liens, minus title and closing costs, minus brokerage fees, minus the tax credit you owe the buyer, adjusted for whatever else your situation includes.
We build one before you list, and we rebuild it against any offer worth considering. The reason to have it early is that it changes decisions. Sellers who fall in love with a sale price before they see the net sheet end up negotiating against a number that was never real. Sellers who see it first negotiate on the terms that actually move their bottom line, which are frequently not the ones they expected.
Seller Closing Costs in Colorado
Seller-side closing costs in Colorado are usually modest, with one item that surprises people. Colorado closings happen at a title company rather than with an attorney, and the settlement statement lays out every dollar.
Most of it is predictable. The item sellers do not anticipate is the property tax credit, because Colorado property taxes are paid in arrears, meaning you pay this year for last year. At closing you credit the buyer for the taxes that accrued during your ownership but have not yet been billed. It is not a fee and it is not lost money, it is a settling of accounts, but it comes out of your proceeds and it is better known in advance.
Loan payoff and lien releases
Your mortgage balance plus any second liens, home equity lines, solar financing, or contractor liens recorded against the property. Anything recorded has to clear before title transfers.
Property tax proration
Your share of the current year’s taxes, credited to the buyer, since Colorado taxes are billed after the fact.
Title and closing fees
The owner’s title policy, usually paid by the seller in Colorado though the contract decides, and the closing fee, split according to your contract. Both are negotiable and do get negotiated.
Brokerage and commission
Your listing agreement terms, paid at closing out of proceeds.
HOA charges
Status letter fees, transfer fees, and any prorated dues if you belong to an association.
HOA Status Letter and Transfer Fees
This is one of the most common cost surprises for Colorado Springs sellers. If your home is in an HOA, the association will charge for producing a status letter confirming your account is current, and many will also charge a transfer fee for moving ownership into their records.
Neither is your agent’s fee, neither is negotiable with the buyer in most cases, and both show up on the settlement statement whether or not anyone mentioned them earlier. The amounts vary considerably between associations, and larger master-planned communities with sub-associations can charge at more than one level. We find out what your association charges early and put it on your net sheet rather than letting it appear at closing. Homes in metro districts carry their own considerations, and those affect what your buyer is qualifying for.
Real Estate Commission, Explained
There are situations where negotiating commission is a reasonable conversation, and we will have it with you directly rather than through a script. Commission is a negotiated term, not a fixed rate, and anyone who tells you otherwise is describing their own policy rather than the law.
What we will not do is pretend the number has no relationship to the work. Marketing budget, professional photography and video, staging coordination, showing management, negotiation, and the transaction coordination that keeps a deal from quietly falling apart between contract and closing all come out of the same place. We are committed to your success before our commission, and the right conversation is about what you are getting, not just what you are paying.
Who Pays the Buyer’s Agent?
The rules changed. What most sellers still choose to do did not. As of the 2024 industry settlement (in effect since August 17, 2024), sellers are no longer required to offer compensation to the buyer’s agent, so any agent who tells you it is mandatory is describing an old rule.
In the large majority of our listings, sellers still choose to offer it, and there is a straightforward reason. Offering buyer-agent compensation keeps your home in front of the widest possible pool of qualified, represented buyers rather than narrowing your audience to those who can pay their own agent out of pocket on top of a down payment. A smaller buyer pool tends to mean a lower final number, which can quietly cost more than the compensation itself. We will walk you through what this means for a listing like yours and let you make the call.
Capital Gains When You Sell Your Home
For most primary-residence sellers, the gain is largely or entirely excluded. Most, not all. If the home has been your primary residence, you can typically exclude up to $250,000 of gain from federal tax if you file single, or up to $500,000 if you are married filing jointly, provided you have owned and lived in the home for at least two of the last five years.
For a large share of sellers, that exclusion covers the entire gain and taxes never enter the picture. Where it gets more complicated is when the home was not always your primary residence, when it was a rental for part of the time, or when your gain runs past the exclusion. Those situations change the math in ways specific to you, and this is one area where we point you to a CPA rather than guess. Confirm the specifics before you list, not after, because it can affect whether selling now is even the right move.
Our Easy-Out Listing Guarantee
If you are not satisfied, ending the agreement takes an email. Most listing agreements are written to be difficult to leave. Ours is not, because we would rather earn the second month than trap you into it.
If you are not satisfied with how we are handling your sale, tell us in writing, an email or a text is enough, and we will release you. We are not offering that because it never gets used. We are offering it because a team that needs a contract to keep clients has a different problem, and because a seller who feels stuck will not be honest with us about what is not working. We would rather hear it and fix it.
Buying and Selling a Home at the Same Time
Your equity is in the house you are leaving, and you need it for the house you are buying. There is no one-size-fits-all answer here and we will not pretend there is.
The right structure depends on how much equity you have, whether you can carry two payments if the timing slips, and how much upheaval your household can absorb. We start with what the sale actually does to your life, then work through the real options with the costs attached. A home equity line drawn against your existing equity before you list can fund a down payment without waiting on your closing. A bridge loan through a lender we trust does something similar with a different cost structure. A negotiated leaseback lets you sell, collect your proceeds, and stay in the home for an agreed period afterward while you close on the next one.
Making your sale contingent on finding your next home is also on the table, and it comes up more than people expect. It genuinely works and takes real pressure off the timing, but a sale contingency makes your listing look less certain to a buyer, which can soften your negotiating position, so we walk you through that cost directly rather than treating it as off limits. If you are buying here as well, our buyers pages cover that side in the same detail.
Bottom line: The sale price is not what you take home. Ask for the net sheet before you get attached to a number, not after.
Sell Your Home Fast: The COS Instant Offer
Most sellers do best on the open market, where competition and exposure tend to produce the highest number. But not every seller is optimizing for the highest number.
Some need certainty and a date they can count on more than they need the last few thousand dollars: a job that already started in another state, an estate that needs to settle, a home that will not show well and a seller with no appetite to fix it. For those situations we offer the COS Instant Offer program, a competitive cash offer within 24 hours that can close on your timeline with no showings, no staging, and no financing contingencies. It is not the right fit for most sellers, and we will not pretend it is, because a traditional listing typically nets more. When speed and certainty genuinely outrank price, it is worth knowing the option exists, and we will lay out the tradeoff honestly and let you decide.
In the interest of full transparency: Jeff Johnson, who owns The Johnson Team, also owns COS Instant Offers. Your agent works for you, not for either company. A sale on the open market usually nets more, so your agent will show you both numbers side by side, including how much you’d give up in exchange for speed and certainty. If the cash offer fits your goals, take it. If listing makes more sense, your agent will be glad to list your home. The choice is yours.
Next: Step 2: Launch · Back to Selling Your Home
Good To Know
Common Questions About Pricing and Costs
The Johnson Team tracks three numbers on every listing: how many transactions our agents close, how long our homes sit before going under contract, and what percentage of list price our homes sell for. We consistently beat the local market average on all three, and on average we sell our listings for about 2 percent more, in less time. Because those figures move with the market and the season, we would rather show you the current numbers directly than print one here that goes stale.
Treat it as a rough starting point, not a list price. An automated estimate cannot see the things that most move your number: which side of a metro district boundary you fall on, how a school district line splits two houses on the same block, your exact HOA structure, condition and updates that never made it into public records, or the homes about to list near you that are not in the data yet. Zillow publishes its own accuracy figures, and even a small percentage error on a home worth hundreds of thousands is real money. That is before the local factors no general model sees at all.
You are not paying theirs, you are settling yours. Colorado property taxes are billed in arrears, so the bill that comes due next year covers the period you owned the home. At closing you credit the buyer for the portion of the year you owned it, and they pay the full bill when it arrives. The Johnson Team shows you the exact figure on your net sheet before you list.
Then the conversation changes, and it should happen early. Depending on the size of the gap, options range from bringing cash to closing, to waiting while you pay down the balance, to a short sale negotiated with your lender. The Johnson Team builds the net sheet, shows you the actual shortfall rather than a guess, and is honest about which paths are realistic for your situation.
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