The 1 Percent Model: Why Maison Pawli Lists for 1% When Nobody Around Us Will Tell You What They Charge

ByPawli Paola Meyer

The first thing a seller should do before hiring anyone to sell their house is ask what the commission is. The second thing is find out what that number actually means. I want to walk you through both — because there’s a reason the big brokerages working the North Shore won’t tell you the first part until you’re sitting across from one of their agents, and there’s a reason the second part is more complicated than most people realize.

I’ll put our numbers on the table right now. Maison Pawli lists homes under three transparent packages: a Smart Seller tier at $500 setup plus 0.5% at closing, a Professional tier at 1%, and a Premier tier at 2%. They are all published on the pricing page, visible to anyone with an internet connection, with every inclusion and every responsibility spelled out in plain English. If you want to run your own math before you ever pick up the phone, there’s a commission calculator on the site too. The 1 percent Professional tier is what most of my sellers choose, so I’ll use that as the reference point for most of this post — but I want you to understand all three before we’re done.

That kind of transparency is not how this industry usually works. I wrote a separate piece recently on what commissions actually cost you on Long Island in 2026 — the traditional structure, the NAR settlement, what changed, what didn’t. This post is the companion to it. Here I want to explain why our model exists, why it’s possible, and why most agents working the same zip codes I do literally cannot match it — even if they wanted to.

Start With a Search No Brokerage Wants You to Run

Go to the website of any major North Shore brokerage right now. Douglas Elliman, Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, Coldwell Banker, Compass, Signature Premier. These are the names on the signs in front of the houses you drive past in Lloyd Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor, Old Field, Setauket. They are the firms that dominate what The Real Deal’s rankings have long called the top of the Long Island residential market — Douglas Elliman alone posts billions in annual sales volume here.

Try to find what they charge to list a house.

You won’t. The pricing is not on the homepage. It’s not on a pricing page, because there is no pricing page. It’s not in a FAQ. It is almost never, in my professional experience, in any public-facing document at all. The industry calls this discretion. I call it what it is: a pricing model that depends on you not having a reference point when you sit down to sign a listing agreement.

The reason this matters is that the number is negotiable — it has always been negotiable, and since the National Association of Realtors settlement took effect on August 17, 2024, it is legally required to be described as negotiable on every listing agreement, because broker fees and commissions are fully negotiable and not set by law. But negotiation only works when both sides know what the range is. A seller who walks into a listing appointment having never seen a published commission number, anywhere, will almost always end up closer to the top of the range than the bottom. That’s the design.

What the Traditional Number Actually Is

Long Island’s traditional total commission has historically sat in the 5 to 6 percent range, split between the listing side and the buyer’s side. The average on Long Island has been between 4 and 6 percent of the total sale price, with the commission usually split between the buyer’s and seller’s agents — each typically receiving 2 to 3 percent. Clever Real Estate’s February 2026 agent survey put the statewide New York average at 5.69 percent — about equal to the 5.70 percent national average.

What that means in dollar terms, on the kind of sale prices I see every week on the North Shore:

  • $900,000 sale at 5.5%: $49,500 in total commission
  • $1.2 million sale at 5.5%: $66,000
  • $1.8 million waterfront at 5.5%: $99,000
  • $2.5 million Gold Coast–adjacent listing at 5.5%: $137,500

Of that, the listing side traditionally takes 2.5 to 3 percent. On a $1.2 million home, that’s $30,000 to $36,000 going to the brokerage that put up the sign. That is a serious portion of your equity — equity you spent years building — gone at the closing table.

What Changed in August 2024, and Why It Matters for You

The NAR settlement that went into effect in August 2024 did something important: it decoupled buyer-agent commissions from the listing side. Before August 17, 2024, listing agents posted an offer of buyer-agent compensation directly on the MLS, the seller paid both sides at closing, and the whole arrangement was largely invisible to the buyer. The settlement changed the rules: effective August 17, 2024, home sellers are no longer automatically responsible for paying commissions to both their own agent and the buyer’s agent, and a seller’s agent can no longer specify on the MLS how much the buyer’s agent will be paid. Buyers now sign written representation agreements with their own agents that specify exactly what that agent will be paid and by whom.

Practically speaking, on Long Island most sellers still offer some buyer-agent compensation as part of negotiating a deal — because most buyers still can’t comfortably add several thousand dollars of agent fees to a down payment and closing costs. But the point is that it is now an explicit, negotiable, separate decision. Your listing agreement covers what you pay your own representation. Buyer-agent compensation is its own conversation.

This matters for a 1 percent model like ours because it lets me tell you exactly what you are paying Maison Pawli, without the fog of a bundled commission pool. One percent is one percent on the listing side. What you choose to offer a buyer’s agent is a separate decision I’ll guide you through when the time comes — with an eye on what the current market actually requires to attract strong offers, not what tradition assumes.

The Part Almost Nobody Explains: Why Most Agents Can’t List at 1%

Here is the structural piece that most sellers do not understand — and that explains, more than anything else, why a 1 percent listing fee is rare from a traditional brokerage even when you ask.

Real estate in New York is a two-tier license system. There are licensed real estate salespersons and there are licensed real estate brokers. A salesperson is what most people call an ”agent.” Under New York law, a salesperson must work under a sponsoring broker. The broker is the one who holds the license authority, runs the brokerage, and — importantly — sets the business rules that every agent working under that broker must follow.

One of those rules, at nearly every major franchise brokerage, is a minimum commission policy. The broker decides the floor. The agent cannot go below it without the broker’s approval. This is why, when you ask a Douglas Elliman agent, a Daniel Gale agent, a Compass agent, or a Coldwell Banker agent if they’ll do the listing for 1 percent, the answer is almost always some version of ”I can’t” — because they genuinely cannot. The broker above them won’t authorize it. Their commission split with the brokerage doesn’t mathematically leave them anything to work with at that rate. And the franchise fees, desk fees, marketing assessments, and corporate overhead baked into the traditional agent’s cost structure make a 1 percent listing fee unworkable on their side of the business.

Maison Pawli is structured differently. I am the broker. I am not a salesperson working under somebody else’s minimum policy. I hold the license authority, I set the rules, and I built this firm from the ground up around an operating model where 1 percent covers the work, the marketing, the representation, and still leaves a viable business behind it. There is no corporate franchise siphoning off a percentage of every closing. There is no glossy regional marketing budget that you, the seller, are quietly funding on every transaction. What there is, instead, is a boutique firm where my husband Peter handles every piece of the marketing, technology, and digital infrastructure in-house — and where I handle the client, the listing, and the negotiation directly.

You are not handing your sale to a company. You are handing it to us.

What a Maison Pawli Listing Actually Looks Like

I want to be careful and specific here, because the discount real estate space is full of companies that advertise a low commission and then quietly strip out the services that matter. A broker who offers a 1 percent or 2 percent commission is often offering à la carte services — and sometimes those commission rates do not include a listing in the local MLS, which means the property isn’t actually exposed to other cooperating realtors. That is not how we work. But I also want to be honest about what each tier covers, because the whole point of this post is transparency.

Maison Pawli offers three seller packages. They are all laid out in plain language on the pricing page, and I’ll walk through them here.

Smart Seller — $500 setup + 0.5% at closing

This is for the savvy homeowner who wants to handle the physical work themselves — photos, showings, open houses, inspection access — but still wants a licensed broker holding the legal, MLS, and negotiation infrastructure around the deal. At this tier we handle MLS listing and syndication, transaction management and paperwork, all negotiations and offer review, buyer telephone inquiries, and email support. You handle documents (tax bill, survey, certificate of occupancy, attorney selection), disclosure forms, your own photography to MLS standard, your own listing description using our template, ShowingTime scheduling, lockbox purchase and management, hosting your own showings and open houses, inspection and appraisal access, the final walkthrough, and collecting proof of funds. It’s the cheapest real-agent path on Long Island that I know of, and it works well for people who are comfortable running their own logistics.

Professional — 1%

This is the tier most of my sellers choose, and it’s the one this post is really about. At 1 percent, Maison Pawli handles:

  • MLS listing and full syndication — Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and the portals where the vast majority of buyer searches begin.
  • Photography processing — you take the listing photos and email them to us (or we arrange processing if you’re outside the Mt. Sinai area), and we handle the technical prep for MLS submission. Professional and drone photography are not part of this tier — they’re part of Premier, which I’ll describe below.
  • Listing copy and listing management
  • ShowingTime scheduling tools for organized showing coordination
  • All documents and disclosure forms — including guidance through New York’s seller disclosure requirements, which carry real legal weight. I’ve written a separate piece on why the seller’s disclosure form is a legal document most sellers treat like a survey that explains why I handle this personally.
  • All negotiations and offer review — this is me, directly. Not an assistant, not a junior agent. I wrote a separate piece on how to read and respond to a lowball offer without losing the deal that walks through exactly how I think about that negotiation.
  • Transaction management and paperwork
  • Attorney, mortgage broker, and vendor referrals — the trusted network on the North Shore
  • Email and phone support throughout

What the seller handles at the 1% Professional tier: showings and open houses, inspection and appraisal access, the final walkthrough, the lockbox (purchase and install), and emailing the listing photos to us. That’s the honest trade-off at this price point — you keep the physical access logistics, we handle everything else.

Premier — 2%

For sellers who want the full white-glove experience — and who are in Mt. Sinai, the surrounding North Shore, or select other locations — we offer the Premier package. This is everything in the Professional tier plus full physical representation at every appointment, hosted private showings, two hosted open houses, our presence at inspections and appraisals, our presence at the final walkthrough, professional photography taken by us, drone photography, a feature on The Heritage Blog, Maison Pawli social media promotion, and for select homes, a showcase in the Heritage Diner lobby — one of the most-trafficked community spaces on the North Shore.

At 2 percent, Premier is still well below what the traditional brokerages charge on the listing side, and it includes things a legacy 2.5 to 3 percent listing agreement often charges extra for — professional photography, drone work, and genuine in-person representation through every stage of the sale.

Which Tier Fits You

The honest answer to ”which tier should I pick” depends on two things: how much of the physical logistics you want to handle yourself, and what your property and market look like. A well-priced home in a liquid neighborhood where showings move quickly and the seller is comfortable hosting is perfectly well served by the Professional 1% tier. A higher-end waterfront listing that needs drone photography, polished in-person presentation, and heavy social amplification is built for Premier. A seller who wants a real agent protecting the deal but is willing to do more of the on-the-ground work themselves belongs in Smart Seller.

None of these tiers strip out the legal infrastructure, the MLS exposure, or the broker representation that actually defines a real estate transaction. The differences are about how much physical presence and how much photography production you’re paying for on top of that foundation.

How This Helps Buyers Too

Everything I’ve described so far is framed around sellers, because a listing commission is technically paid out of seller proceeds. But buyers benefit from a 1 percent model in ways that are less obvious and worth naming.

When a seller’s listing costs are lower, two things become possible. The first is simple: the seller has more flexibility in negotiation. A seller who is paying 5.5 percent in total commission on an $800,000 house has $44,000 of closing-cost pressure baked in before negotiation even starts. A seller listing at 1 percent with a reasonable buyer-agent compensation structure has meaningfully less of that pressure. That flexibility can show up as a seller who accepts a slightly lower offer, agrees to a repair credit, or moves faster on a contingency because their net math still works.

The second is that a boutique brokerage representing a seller tends to result in a cleaner transaction for the buyer’s agent on the other side. There are fewer layers between offer and decision. The listing agent — me — is the same person who talks to the seller, the same person who drafts the counter, the same person who flags the inspection issue. Buyers and their agents feel the difference in pace and clarity.

The Competitive Landscape — and What to Ask Any Agent Before You Sign

I do not disparage my competitors. The big franchise brokerages on the North Shore have long, accomplished track records, and many of their individual agents are excellent. What I will say is this: if their pricing model were genuinely competitive on its face, it would be public. The fact that it is not is the most honest piece of information a seller has about the industry before they sit down at a listing appointment.

If you are interviewing agents — from us or from anyone — these are the questions to ask, in writing, before signing anything:

  1. What is your listing commission, stated as a specific percentage or flat fee? Not a range. A number.
  2. Is that the total you will charge, or is there a separate transaction fee, marketing fee, administrative fee, or technology fee that will appear at closing?
  3. Does the fee include professional photography, MLS listing, syndication to Zillow and Realtor.com, open house coordination, and contract-to-close management? If not, what is extra, and how much?
  4. Are you a licensed broker, or a salesperson working under a sponsoring broker? If a salesperson: does your broker set a minimum commission you cannot go below?
  5. What buyer-agent compensation will you advise me to offer, and why? A good answer is specific to your property, your price point, and current North Shore buyer behavior — not a default percentage.
  6. What happens if the house doesn’t sell during the listing period? Cancellation terms matter.

If an agent cannot answer these cleanly, in plain English, without hedging, that tells you something important about what you are about to sign. If an agent answers them cleanly and the math still works better than the alternative, that tells you something too.

Pawli’s Take

The real estate industry built itself around a commission structure that made sense in 1985, when listings sat in paper binders at the brokerage office, a Sunday newspaper ad was the best exposure a house could get, and the listing agent’s role included a volume of physical-world logistics that simply no longer exists. Digital listing portals, syndication, virtual staging, digital signature platforms, and transaction-management software have compressed the cost of selling a house to a fraction of what it used to be. The commission number, at most firms, has not moved to match.

I built Maison Pawli with Peter on the premise that a seller shouldn’t have to pay a percentage designed for 1985 to get representation designed for 2026. Ten-plus years of hands-on experience, every piece of the marketing and tech built in-house by Peter, and direct access to me as the broker — not as an agent passing you up a chain — at 1 percent on the listing side. That’s the whole model. It works because we built it to work.

If you want to run the math on your own property, the commission calculator is there. If you want to sit down and talk about it specifically, you know where to find me.

This post is for informational purposes only and is not legal or financial advice — please consult a licensed attorney or tax professional for guidance specific to your situation. Commission arrangements are always negotiable and are not set by law. Real estate markets change. For current listings and market data, contact Pawli at Maison Pawli.

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