70/30 vs 80/20 vs 100% Commission Split: Which Brokerage Plan Pays More?

Every agent who has been licensed longer than a year has had this conversation: someone at a 100% brokerage says you are giving away thirty per cent of your income, and someone at a full-service shop says the desk fee will eat you alive in a slow quarter.

They are both right, at different production levels, and the level where the answer flips is a specific number you can calculate in about five minutes. Here it is, run on three real plan shapes.

The Three Plans

Every brokerage plan is some combination of four things: a split percentage, sometimes a cap, a monthly desk or office fee, and a per-transaction fee. That is it. Fancy names, four levers.

These are illustrative shapes, not offers — put your own terms in the same four rows before you compare anything.

The Agent

Twelve closings a year at $11,625 gross commission each: $139,500 GCI. (That is a 2.5% listing-side commission on a $465,000 sale, the same deal used in the full per-sale commission breakdown.)

Plan A: 70/30, No Cap

You keep 70% of everything, all year, forever.

Effective split: 69.6%.

The defining feature of an uncapped split is that it never stops. Your twentieth deal costs you the same thirty per cent as your first. That is fine — even good — if your volume is modest, because you carry almost no fixed cost. It is brutal if you have a strong year, because the brokerage’s take rises in lockstep with your production and there is no ceiling.

Plan B: 80/20 With a $16,000 Cap

You keep 80% until the brokerage has collected $16,000 from you, then 100% for the rest of your anniversary year.

The cap is reached at $16,000 ÷ 0.20 = $80,000 of GCI — deal number seven, partway through.

Effective split: 87.7%.

Notice what the cap does to your incentives. Deals one to six cost you 20% each. Deal eight costs you nothing. Your effective split on the back half of the year is 100%, which is why capped agents guard their anniversary date and push hard to close before it resets — a fact worth putting in your calendar rather than discovering in month eleven.

Plan C: 100% With a $995 Desk Fee

You keep every dollar of commission and pay for the privilege.

Effective split: 89.3%.

Side by Side, Same Production

At twelve deals, Plan C wins — but only by $2,200 over Plan B, which is well inside the range where training, leads, brand or a transaction coordinator would justify the difference. Plan A loses by more than a full deal’s take-home.

The Break-Even Points — Where the Answer Flips

The comparison above is one production level. The useful version is the GCI level where each plan overtakes the next, because that tells you which plan you should be on given the year you are actually going to have.

Plan A versus Plan C. Set them equal: 0.70G − $600 = G − $14,940. Solve: G = $47,800.

Below $47,800 of GCI — about four deals at $11,625 — the 70/30 plan pays more. Above it, the 100% plan wins and the gap widens by 30 cents on every additional dollar of commission.

Plan B versus Plan C. Before the cap: 0.80G − $1,140 = G − $14,940. Solve: G = $69,000.

Below $69,000 GCI, the capped 80/20 plan pays more. Above it, 100% pulls ahead — and once you have capped, Plan B is effectively “$17,140 of brokerage cost” against Plan C’s “$14,940 plus $250 a deal”, so the two converge and Plan C stays marginally ahead.

Plan A versus Plan B. 0.70G − $600 = 0.80G − $1,140 gives G = $5,400. Essentially always: unless you close well under one deal a year, the capped 80/20 beats the uncapped 70/30.

Run It On Your Own Numbers — The Five-Minute Version

Copy this and fill in one column per plan you are considering:

Two traps to avoid while you fill it in.

Use realistic GCI, not goal GCI. The plan that wins at your target volume can lose badly at your actual volume, and desk fees are charged monthly whether or not you close anything. Run the table twice — once at last year’s production, once at your goal — and see whether the answer changes. If it does, the honest choice is the plan that survives the bad year.

Do not forget the franchise fee. Where one applies it usually comes off gross before the split is calculated, which makes a 6% franchise fee cost more than 6% of your money. Model it as its own line, at the top.

What the Split Comparison Cannot Tell You

The arithmetic here settles exactly one question: which plan leaves more money on the table for a given production level. It says nothing about the things that determine whether you hit that production in the first place — lead flow, mentorship, a broker who answers the phone on a Saturday, a transaction coordinator who saves you eight hours a deal, errors and omissions cover, the brand on the sign.

Those have real dollar value; they are just not in the split. A useful way to price them: if the split difference between two plans is $2,200 a year and one of them saves you six hours per transaction across twelve deals, it is buying 72 hours for $2,200 — about $31 an hour. Then decide.

And whichever plan you land on, the split is only stage two of the six between the closing statement and your bank account. Fixed business costs, deal-specific spending and the tax set-aside take a further bite that no brokerage plan can change — and those you control entirely.

Plans A, B and C are illustrative shapes, not offers from any brokerage. Splits, caps, desk fees, transaction fees and franchise fees vary widely — substitute your own terms before making a decision. General information, not financial or legal advice.