Who pays what at a Long Island closing
*Every closing splits the bill two ways. Here is the whole ledger, seller column and buyer column, so nothing surprises you in week six.*
Ask most people what it costs to sell or buy on Long Island and you get one number: the price. The price is the headline. The ledger underneath decides what you actually keep or actually need.
The seller's column
The New York State transfer tax comes first: $2 for every $500 of the sale price, which works out to 0.4 percent. Sell at $700,000 and the state takes $2,800 from your proceeds at the table. Suffolk and Nassau add no county transfer tax of their own, whatever some online calculators claim. You can check your own figure in ten seconds on the transfer tax calculator.
After the state: the brokerage fee as agreed in your listing, your attorney, your mortgage payoff, and any repairs negotiated after inspection. The attorney and payoff figures are yours alone, so I will not invent averages here. Your attorney quotes the first, your lender letter states the second.
The buyer's column
Buyers carry the mansion tax when it applies: 1 percent of the entire price once a home reaches $1,000,000. It is a cliff, not a bracket. At $999,000 it is zero. At $1,000,000 it is $10,000.
Then the stack: lender fees, title insurance and searches, recording costs, and the escrow deposit for property taxes and insurance. On Long Island the working range for all of it is roughly 3 to 5 percent of the purchase price, on top of the down payment. The affordability calculator shows that cash line next to your monthly number.
The two lines people forget
Sellers forget the transfer tax because nobody mails a bill; it just leaves the proceeds. Buyers forget the escrow deposit, because it is not a fee, it is your own money parked in advance, and it still has to be in the bank.
One more wrinkle worth knowing: the state transfer tax is the seller's to pay, but if the seller fails to pay it, the buyer becomes liable for it. That is why it gets settled at the closing table with everyone watching, and why your attorney reads the settlement statement line by line before anyone signs.
If you want your own two columns filled in with real figures instead of ranges, ask. That is the whole point of a free home review: every line itemized before you commit to anything.