I’m currently starting the process of selling a house for the first time (wish me luck!). As part of this, I began investigating the world of listing agents and their commission models and, like many before me, was pretty disappointed with the incentives built into the usual fixed-percentage commission structures: Basically the most rational thing for a listing agent to do under this model is to convince you to sell for whatever semi-reasonable price you can get quickly and without too much effort.

This is especially concerning given the amounts of money involved — real estate sales and purchases tend to be among the biggest and most consequential ones people make in their entire lives.

I wondered: what approach do I wish I could take, particularly one that doesn’t require “changing the whole broken system”. My favorite answer so far is Progressive Commissions: which reward listing agents very little for just getting a sale done at a low price, but scale up the reward quickly if they can get you a better and better sale price.

This page is a dynamic explainer / calculator to help people understand the concept and even come up with a specific commission structure that works for their home sale.