How NetSheet.org gets its numbers

It starts from the sale price and takes off each cost that state and county charge at closing. A rules engine holds the rules for every state and DC. It knows each transfer tax, mortgage tax, title insurance schedule and recording fee, and who usually pays each one. Where a county or city has its own rule, that rule is used there.

The same engine runs everywhere: the net sheet calculator, the app, the PDFs, the quick calculators on the state, county and city pages, and the worked examples in their text. It runs on our server. Your browser sends the price and place and gets the figures back. So a page and the calculator always give the same answer for the same inputs.

From official sources first. For each rule we read the statute, the state revenue department, the county recorder or clerk, the city finance office, or the state's title insurance rate manual. The rule keeps a link to the page we used.

Some government pages block automated access or do not say who pays. Then we use a trusted second source, such as a title insurer's rate guide or a bar association guide, and mark the rule as medium confidence. Today 217 rules match an official source (high), 141 rest on a trusted second source (medium), and 7 could not be fully confirmed (low). The low ones are listed in our verification log and get checked again first.

Title insurance follows the state's own schedule where the state sets the price, as in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Iowa, New York, New Jersey and Ohio. In other states each insurer files its own rates, so we use typical rates and say so on the page.

Every rule in every state and DC was checked against its source on September 29, 2026, and a second pass on September 30 corrected and added more. Since then we recheck one state at a time. Wyoming and California were rechecked in October 2026. Each page shows the month its state was last checked, as "Rates last checked".

When a law sets a new rate on a future date, we store both rates. The pages switch on that date. Nebraska's documentary stamp tax change and Washington's yearly excise tax thresholds work this way.

Every correction is written into a verification log with the old value, the new value and the source. If you see a rate that looks wrong, email [email protected]. We check it against the source and fix it.

Taxes set by law are calculated exactly from the price. Some other lines can only be typical figures:

• Title and settlement fees. Where insurers set their own prices, and for settlement, escrow and search fees, we use typical local amounts. Your title or escrow company gives the real quote.
• Lender fees and prepaids on buyer sheets are typical amounts. The lender's Loan Estimate has the real ones.
• Home values and tax bills on the county and city pages come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (2020 to 2024, 5-year estimates). Where the Census only says "$2,000,000 or more", we use Redfin's median sale price. In Florida the calculator can read the yearly tax from the county tax roll.
• Worked examples on our pages use a 5% commission, a loan payoff of 60% of the price, 20% down for the buyer and a July 1 closing. Change any of them in the calculator.

A net sheet is an estimate for planning. It is not a closing statement or tax advice. The final figures come from the title or escrow company handling the sale.

Income tax and capital gains tax on the sale, moving costs, and bills paid outside of closing. The sheet covers only what is paid at closing.

A lot, and we want to be clear about where. The state, county and city pages are built by software. It fills one page per place with that place's rules and Census figures. The figures on those pages are calculated by the rules engine. They are not written by an AI model.

AI is used in two places on the site. Penny, the assistant inside the app, answers questions and fills in net sheets from a chat. And The Closing Table's sale reports are written by AI from public records, as explained below. Every rate in the rules engine is stored with the source page it was checked against and the date, and every change is logged.

The Closing Table reports recorded home and commercial sales. Each report is made automatically from public deed records that counties publish. Software collects the price, the date, the parcel and the names of buyer and seller as the record shows them. In some counties an AI model reads the scanned deed to do this. An AI model then writes a short summary of the sale. The seller and buyer net sheets in each report come from the same rules engine as the rest of the site, at the recorded price.

Reports are published without a person reading each one first. Automated checks hold back a sale unless the deed, the county index and the tax roll agree on the price and the property. They also check that every figure in the summary comes from the record. Names come from the public record. If a report is wrong, or you want one corrected, email [email protected].

Email [email protected] with the page and the figure, and the source if you have one. You can also type over any line in the calculator when your closing differs. See about NetSheet.org for more on who it is for.