What a San Diego sale actually costs at close

How much are closing costs in California for a seller?

A San Diego County seller's closing costs are dominated by commission; everything else is comparatively small. The rest of the list is the documentary transfer tax at $1.10 per $1,000 of price, the owner's title policy, a share of the escrow fee, any county or HOA charges owed through close, and whatever repair credit the buyer negotiates after inspection.

No total percentage is published here, because the largest line is negotiable and quoting an average as though it were a rate is how those figures mislead. What can be said precisely is the arithmetic of the fixed lines, which is what the rest of this page does.

The line most sellers omit from their own estimate is the repair credit, because it is invisible until roughly three weeks in. Plan for one rather than hoping.

What is the documentary transfer tax in San Diego County?

The documentary transfer tax across San Diego County is $1.10 per $1,000 of the price — $0.55 per $500 — and it is customarily paid by the seller. On a $1,500,000 sale that is $1,650.

Unusually for California, the figure is the same everywhere in this county. All eighteen incorporated cities — San Diego, Carlsbad, Del Mar, Encinitas, Oceanside, Escondido, Chula Vista, Poway, Vista, San Marcos, Santee, La Mesa, El Cajon, Solana Beach, Coronado, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove and National City — levy $0.55 per $1,000, with the county taking $0.55 alongside it. In the unincorporated county the county takes the full $1.10. Either way the total is $1.10.

That matters most to sellers arriving from Los Angeles or the Bay Area, where city surcharges stack on top and a high-value sale can attract a far larger bill. Nothing of that kind applies here today. The rate is set by ordinance and can change, so treat the figure escrow computes as the one that counts.

Who pays for title insurance in California?

In San Diego County, as across Southern California, the seller customarily pays for the buyer's owner's title policy — the opposite of the custom in much of Northern California. The buyer pays separately for the lender's policy their mortgage requires.

Custom is not law. Every one of these allocations is a term of the contract and can be negotiated, and in a market where the seller has leverage they sometimes are. But an offer that quietly reassigns a customary cost is worth reading closely, because it is a price change wearing different clothes.

Title work also matters to the calendar, not just the budget. Order the preliminary report early: an old lien, a sibling still on the deed or an uncorrected boundary takes weeks to clear, as covered on the timeline page.

Who pays escrow fees in California?

Buyer and seller in San Diego County each customarily pay their own half of the escrow fee, which is typically calculated as a rate per thousand of the purchase price plus a flat base charge. Escrow companies publish their schedules, so the figure can be checked before opening escrow rather than discovered in the settlement statement.

An unrepresented seller can choose the escrow company, and it is worth choosing deliberately rather than accepting whoever the buyer's side names. Ask what the fee is at your price point, what the sub-escrow and wire fees are, and whether they have handled by-owner transactions before — a good escrow officer will do a great deal of the coordination a listing agent would otherwise be doing.

How does my mortgage get paid off when I sell?

Selling a San Diego County home with a mortgage does not require paying the loan off first. Escrow orders a payoff demand from the lender, settles the balance out of the sale proceeds at closing, and wires whatever remains to the seller — so the loan is cleared by the transaction rather than before it.

Two details are worth knowing in advance. A payoff demand is good only through a stated date and includes interest to that date, so a delayed closing means a fresh demand and slightly more interest. And a home equity line has to be closed as well as paid, because a zero balance left open is still a recorded lien against the title.

Proceeds usually reach the seller a day or so after recording rather than at signing. If the money is needed to close a purchase the same week, say so early — that is a sequencing problem with known solutions, but only if somebody knows about it before the week arrives.