What Northshore Sellers Forget to Budget For Before Listing

By Gregg Tepper

I have been married to my wonderful wife Letha for 30 years. We have 3 children: Max, Alexander and Charlotte. I have been a licensed Realtor in the New Orleans area for 21 years and am the Operator of The Tepper Group with Keller Williams Realty in Mandeville. Our team services the entire New Orleans and Baton Rouge metro areas. Our team of partners has well over 70 years of experience. In the last 2 years we helped 269 families buy, sell and lease homes, land and commercial investments.

When you decided to sell, you did some math. Sale price, minus what you owe and the commission. That’s your number. That may not be reliable. Not because the commission is wrong, but because it’s the only cost you counted.

Almost every seller we talk to runs that same calculation, and then closing arrives; they look at the closing statement and see lines on it that nobody warned them about.

Here’s how common that gap is. Realtor.com found that 83% of sellers expect to get their asking price or more heading into 2026, but only 39% expect to make any concessions.

Then look at what actually happened nationally: 46.2% of home sales that closed in May involved a seller concession, up from 43.1% a year earlier, the highest May share on record.

The commission is the one you already know about. It’s real, and the compensation agreed to in your listing agreement is something we’ll walk you through before you sign. But you expect that one. It’s the other costs that catch sellers off guard.

Concessions are now closer to the rule than the exception. A seller concession isn’t the same thing as lowering your list price. It’s money you put toward the buyer’s side to get the deal done, covering allowable closing costs, a repair credit, or contributing toward a rate buy-down, depending on the transaction and loan rules. It comes out of your proceeds. And this is where national numbers only get you so far, because they can’t tell you what’s happening on your street.

Here in Southeast Louisiana, closed sales actually rose across the New Orleans area in the first half of the year, even as the local Realtors association points to more sellers offering concessions to get deals done. What a seller in your parish should expect depends on your neighborhood, price point, property type, and competition, not a headline from another metro.

Then there’s the stack, and here in Louisiana some of it looks a little different.

• Title and settlement fees
• Recording fees
• Property tax prorations
• Your mortgage payoff
• Interest through the closing date
• Potential repair credits or other concessions

Depending on your situation, there may be other transaction costs as well. We won’t quote you a national average, because there isn’t an honest one. What matters is Louisiana, your parish, and the specifics of your sale, which is exactly why this conversation has to be local.

So here’s what we’d tell you before you list anything. Don’t ask what it costs to sell. Ask what you’ll walk away with. Those are different questions, and only one of them matters. The costs are just line items. Net proceeds are the number you actually live on, and we’ll build it for you before you ever sign: every line, your payoff, and a realistic concession estimate for your specific market.

Bring us your Southeast Louisiana address, and we’ll walk you through what you could realistically expect to walk away with after your mortgage payoff, commission, concessions, and other transaction costs. Call or text us at (985) 218-5445, or email us at TGroup@kw.com, or visit findnolahomes.com. Better to see that number now than at the closing table.