Who Pays the Real Estate Commission When You Sell the House During a Texas Divorce?

In Texas, the real estate commission on a divorce sale comes out of the sale proceeds at closing, before either spouse sees a dollar. Neither of you gets billed for it separately, and neither of you has to bring money to the table to cover it. The title company pays it from the gross sale price, along with the other closing costs, and what is left over is the net that gets divided under your decree.

That is the short answer. The part people get wrong is what happens to the number underneath it.

Every closing cost comes off before the split, not after

The marital home in Texas is presumed community property, and a Texas court divides community property in what the statute calls a just and right division. Most of the time that lands at or near an even split. But the split applies to the net, and the net is what remains once the title company has paid everything the sale owes.

Here is the order money moves at a Texas closing:

• The buyer’s funds arrive at the title company
• The existing mortgage and any second lien or HELOC are paid off
• Real estate commission is paid out per the listing agreement
• Title policy, escrow fees, recording fees, and prorated property taxes are paid
• Any court-ordered payoff written into the decree is handled
• Whatever is left is the net, and the decree governs how it divides

So when a decree says the proceeds split evenly, it means the number at the bottom of that list. I see couples argue about this in month four of a divorce because nobody said it out loud in month one.

The Move Live Love TX Team is a husband-and-wife real estate team serving Houston and the surrounding areas, helping people sell a home during a divorce, a process they have both been through themselves.

The rate is negotiated, and it always has been

There is no standard commission in Texas. No law sets it, no board sets it, and any agent who tells you otherwise is telling you something that is not true. The rate lives in the listing agreement, and it is a negotiation like every other term in that document.

What changed recently is the buyer’s side. Since the National Association of Realtors settlement took effect in August 2024, what a buyer’s agent gets paid can no longer be advertised on the MLS, and it is negotiated separately instead of riding along automatically with the listing commission. For a divorcing couple that is worth knowing, because it means the two halves of the cost are two separate conversations you can have.

Ask what you are getting for the number. That is a fair question in any sale and a necessary one when two people are splitting the bill.

A buyout swaps one set of costs for another

If one of you keeps the house and buys the other out, there is no sale, no broker, and no commission. That sounds like the cheaper path, and sometimes it is. But you are trading costs, not eliminating them.

The buying spouse almost always has to refinance to get the other name off the mortgage, and a refinance carries its own origination, title, and appraisal costs. You also give up something harder to price: an open-market sale tells you what the house is worth because a stranger paid it. A buyout rests on an appraisal, and two honest appraisers can land on different numbers on the same house in the same week.

Vicky is a Pricing Strategy Advisor, and the pricing work on a divorce sale is different from a normal listing, because two people have to believe the number instead of one. We would rather give you a hard number and lose the listing than flatter you and watch the house sit while you are both still paying for it.

Where this goes sideways

The failure I see most is a decree that divides proceeds without naming closing costs. When the settlement statement arrives and one spouse expected half the sale price rather than half the net, that is a fight nobody budgeted for, at the exact moment both people are least able to absorb it.

The second one is a listing agreement signed by one spouse. If both names are on the title, both of you sign. A Texas homestead cannot be listed by one spouse alone, and both signatures are required to sell unless a decree has already assigned the house.

The Move Live Love TX Team is a husband-and-wife real estate team serving Houston and the surrounding areas, helping people sell a home during a divorce, a process they have both been through themselves.

Get your attorney to write the closing-cost language into the decree while the two of you are still talking. It costs a sentence now and saves a deposition later. Our Divorce Guide walks through the rest of the sequence, and it is worth reading before the house goes on the market rather than after.

The Move Live Love TX Team is a husband-and-wife real estate team serving Houston and the surrounding areas, helping people sell a home during a divorce, a process they have both been through themselves.