How much can you ask for in seller concessions?
The ceiling on a seller credit is set by your loan program, not by the seller and not by where the home is. A conventional loan allows 3% of the price with less than 10% down, 6% with 10% to 25% down, and 9% with 25% or more down. FHA allows 6%. VA works differently: the seller can pay all of the buyer’s closing costs and market-rate discount points with no VA limit, and a separate 4% of appraised value can go toward the VA funding fee, prepaids, and paying off the buyer’s debts. On a $575,000 home, that is $17,250 to $51,750 on a conventional or FHA loan, and on a VA loan it is every closing cost plus up to $23,000 more. The credit covers real costs, never cash back. Sellers in the Orlando area are giving more concessions than a year ago, so the question is not whether to ask, but how much and in what form.
By Nelson Cruz, P.A. | September 7, 2026
Start with the market. The Orlando Regional REALTOR® Association’s July 2026 report put the Orlando-area median sale price at $410,494, inventory at 12,043 homes, months of supply at 4.4, and average days on market at 64. In the same report, ORRA said 68% of its members are seeing more seller concessions than a year ago. Freddie Mac’s survey on September 3, 2026 put the 30-year fixed rate at 6.71%, up from 6.50% a year earlier.
Closer to home, as of September 7, 2026, Winter Garden and Oakland had 659 active listings with a median asking price of $575,000 and 45 new listings in the past week. Clermont had 576 listings at a $480,000 median asking price, and Ocoee had 120 at $451,000. Those are asking prices on active inventory, pulled from the MLS snapshot on my relocation guides, not sold prices.
That combination — more homes to choose from, more days on market, and a rate that still starts with a six — is why credits are back on the table. Asking for a round number is the buyer’s mistake. Treating a credit like a price cut is the seller’s. Neither one is right.
The loan sets the ceiling, not the seller
Every lender program limits what an “interested party” (the seller, the builder, or an agent) can contribute toward your costs. Ask for more than the cap and the lender does not let you keep it.
Conventional loans (Fannie Mae Selling Guide B3-4.1-02, effective May 7, 2025):
- Down payment under 10% (LTV above 90%): 3% of the price
- Down payment of 10% to just under 25% (LTV 75.01% to 90%): 6%
- Down payment of 25% or more (LTV 75% or below): 9%
- Investment property, any down payment: 2%
FHA loans: interested parties may contribute up to 6% (HUD Handbook 4000.1, Section II.A.4.d.iii). FHA has also confirmed that a seller paying the buyer’s real estate agent compensation is not counted against the 6% when it follows state law and is reasonable in amount (FHA INFO 2024-12, March 28, 2024).
VA loans don’t cap what a seller pays toward your ordinary closing costs: title, appraisal, recording, survey, origination, and discount points at the going market rate. VA only caps what it defines as a “seller concession”: paying your VA funding fee, prepaying your taxes and insurance, paying off your credit balances or judgments, gifts like appliances, and points beyond the market rate for a buydown. Those, combined, can’t exceed 4% of the appraised value (VA Pamphlet 26-7, Lenders Handbook, Chapter 8, Topic 5). Anything over 4% makes the loan unacceptable to VA, so your lender sorts every seller-paid item into the right bucket before the offer is written.
Run those against a $575,000 Winter Garden purchase:
| Loan | Down payment | Maximum credit |
|---|---|---|
| Conventional | 5% | $17,250 |
| Conventional | 10% | $34,500 |
| Conventional | 25% | $51,750 |
| FHA | 3.5% | $34,500 |
| VA | 0% | All closing costs + up to $23,000 in concessions |
One more rule: under the Fannie Mae guide, any financing concession above the cap is reclassified as a sales concession, subtracted from the sales price, and the loan-to-value is recalculated on the lower number. In plain terms, the excess turns into a price reduction whether you wanted one or not.
What the credit can actually pay for in Florida
A seller credit covers your closing costs, prepaid items, and discount points. It cannot exceed those costs, and it does not come back to you as cash at the closing table.
On a $575,000 purchase with 5% down (a $546,250 loan), the Florida-specific line items look like this:
- Documentary stamp tax on the note: 35 cents per $100 of the loan (Florida Statutes 201.08), or $1,912
- Nonrecurring intangible tax on the mortgage: 2 mills on the loan amount (Florida Statutes 199.133), or $1,093
- Lender’s title policy: Florida’s promulgated rate is $5.75 per $1,000 on the first $100,000 and $5.00 per $1,000 from $100,000 to $1 million (Florida Administrative Code 69O-186.003), which would be $2,806 on its own. If the seller buys the owner’s policy under paragraph 9(c)(i) of the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar contract, the lender’s policy issued at the same time carries a $25 minimum simultaneous-issue rate instead.
- Prepaids: your first year of homeowners insurance, the escrow deposit for property taxes and insurance, and interest from closing to month-end. These vary by home and closer; your Loan Estimate is the only number that counts.
- Lender and third-party fees: origination, appraisal, credit report, survey, recording. Also on the Loan Estimate.
Add those up and, as an estimate, a 5% down buyer on a $575,000 home needs a credit in the low-to-mid teens of thousands to walk in with only the down payment; the exact figure is on the Loan Estimate. That is why, at Winter Garden’s current median asking price, the 3% conventional cap ($17,250) is the number that matters for a buyer putting less than 10% down, and why 10% down doubles the room to negotiate.
Credit or price cut: which one lowers the payment?
This is the question I walk every buyer and seller through before we write or counter.
Take the same $575,000 home, 5% down, 6.71%. Principal and interest on a $546,250 loan is $3,528 a month.
Option A: a $10,000 price cut. The loan drops to $536,750 and the payment drops to $3,467. You save about $61 a month, and you still bring every dollar of closing costs to the table.
Option B: a $10,000 seller credit. The price stays at $575,000. If you use the credit on discount points, $10,000 buys roughly 1.83 points on that loan. What a point buys you changes daily and by lender; as an estimate, at an eighth of a percent per point you would land near 6.48% and save about $83 a month, and at a quarter point per point you would land near 6.25% and save about $164 a month. Or you skip the points, use the credit to cover the doc stamps, intangible tax, title, and prepaids above, and keep $10,000 in the bank on closing day.
The credit wins on the payment and on cash-to-close. The price cut wins only if you are already at the concession cap, or if you are paying cash.
For a seller, the math is the same $10,000 off your net either way. The difference is what the sale price does afterward. A credit keeps the recorded price at $575,000, which is what the next appraiser and the next buyer’s agent will see when they pull comps on your street. A price cut records at $565,000. In a market where 45 homes a week are hitting the Winter Garden market, protecting the comp matters.
Two cautions before you get excited:
- The house still has to appraise at the full price. Your lender reviews the credit against both the cap and the appraised value. If the appraisal comes in low, a large credit is the first thing the underwriter looks at.
- You can’t bank the leftover. If the credit is bigger than your actual costs, the difference is either lost or treated as a price reduction by the lender. Size the credit to the Loan Estimate, not to a round number.
Where the room to ask actually comes from
The caps tell you the most a lender will allow. They don’t tell you what a seller will give. That comes from the gap between how a home is positioned on the market and where it actually trades.
Every listing has an asking price, and every closed sale has a real one. When those two numbers sit far apart, that’s room. A seller who has been on the market for weeks at a number the comps don’t support has a reason to hold the price on paper and give it back as a credit rather than cut the price outright. The credit protects the comp; the buyer gets the cash at closing. Both sides get something the price cut alone wouldn’t give them.
Finding that gap is the work. It means reading the comps, the days on market, and the price history on a specific house, then structuring the offer so the credit fits under the buyer’s loan cap and the contract still holds together. That’s not something a calculator does. It’s what I do for buyers before we write.
One condition, and it isn’t optional: the home has to appraise at the contract price. A credit lives inside the purchase price, so if the appraisal comes in under contract, the lender re-runs the numbers on the lower value and the credit is the first thing that gets squeezed. If the appraisal supports the price, the structure works. If it doesn’t, no amount of negotiating fixes it.
How to write it into the contract
In the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar “AS IS” Residential Contract (form ASIS-7x, revised 2026), the seller’s contribution is written as a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the purchase price, and it is paid at closing toward the buyer’s closing costs, prepaids, and loan costs. The financing contingency in paragraph 8(b) gives the buyer a Loan Approval Period of 30 days if the blank is left empty, so the lender has time to size the credit against the cap before the buyer is locked in.
Here is how I structure it:
- Buyers: get the Loan Estimate first, then ask. Ask for a percentage that fits under your cap, and include the sentence “toward Buyer’s closing costs, prepaids, and discount points” so you can move money to a rate buydown if the costs come in under the estimate.
- Sellers: counter the credit, not the price, when the offer is close. Ask the buyer’s lender (through their agent) to confirm the cap in writing so you are not agreeing to a number that gets reclassified later.
- Both: run the numbers on the actual house. A Clermont townhome at $480,000 and a Horizon West home at $600,000 land in different places on the same 3% cap: $14,400 versus $18,000.
If you are a first responder, nurse, teacher, or veteran, there is one more layer. The Florida Hometown Heroes program for 2026 provides up to 5% of the first mortgage amount (minimum $10,000, maximum $35,000) toward down payment and closing costs as a 0%, deferred second mortgage, according to Florida Housing. A seller credit can sit alongside that assistance, but the order matters and the lender has to structure it. That is exactly the kind of thing I sort out before the offer goes in, not after.
Related reading: before you go under contract, review the things you shouldn’t do when buying a home, because a new car loan the week after your offer is accepted can undo every dollar of a hard-won credit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a seller concession give me cash back at closing?
No. A seller credit can only be applied to closing costs, prepaid items, and discount points, and lenders cap it at 3% to 9% of the price on conventional loans and 6% on FHA. On a VA loan the seller can pay all of your closing costs, and a separate 4% of appraised value covers items like the funding fee, prepaids, and debt payoff. Any amount above your actual costs or above the cap is lost or reclassified as a price reduction.
Does the seller paying my agent’s compensation count against the concession cap?
For FHA loans, no. FHA INFO 2024-12 confirmed that seller-paid buyer agent compensation is not treated as an interested party contribution when it is allowed by state law and reasonable in amount. For conventional and VA loans, confirm the treatment with your lender in writing before you rely on it.
Is a seller credit or a price reduction better for a buyer?
For a financed buyer under the cap, the credit. A $10,000 price cut saves about $61 a month on a $575,000 purchase at 6.71%, while the same $10,000 as a credit can cover the doc stamps, intangible tax, title, and prepaids, or buy the rate down for a larger monthly saving. A price cut only wins if you are already at the cap or paying cash.
What is a typical seller concession in Orlando in 2026?
There is no published local average. ORRA’s July 2026 report says 68% of its members are seeing more seller concessions than a year ago, and the Orlando area had 4.4 months of supply and 64 average days on market. Your number should come from your Loan Estimate and your loan’s cap, not from a market average.
Can I use a seller credit to buy down my interest rate?
Yes. Discount points are an allowed use of interested party contributions under both the Fannie Mae Selling Guide and the FHA definition of an interested party contribution. Make sure the contract language says the credit can go toward closing costs, prepaids, and discount points.
What to do next
The seller does not set your concession ceiling; your loan does. Get the Loan Estimate, find your cap, and ask for a credit sized to the real costs on the real house, in writing, with language that lets you move it to a rate buydown. Sellers, counter on the credit before the price and protect the comp.
Every deal lands differently once you plug in the actual price, down payment, and loan type. If you want the numbers run on the home you are buying or selling, schedule a strategy session at mvphomegroup.com/nelsoncruz. If you are a first responder, veteran, nurse, or teacher, HonorFloridaHeroes.com walks through the Florida Hometown Heroes program and what you may qualify for. If you are moving into West Orange County, the Winter Garden relocation guide at LiveMoveOrlando.com covers the corridors, commutes, and price ranges.
About Nelson Cruz, P.A.
Nelson Cruz, P.A. is a REALTOR® (Florida license SL3491226) and the Founder & Team Leader of MVP Home Group at Real Broker LLC in Winter Garden, Florida. He spent 18 years in law enforcement before real estate and has been responsible for over $50 million in personal production, working extensively with first responders, veterans, nurses, and teachers, including buyers using the Florida Hometown Heroes program. Reach him at mvphomegroup.com/nelsoncruz.