Most often, they get a piece of every transaction in the office. Their license is on the line for it.

Of course, broker/owners who don’t want to be principal are usually playing rope-a-dope, so whatever you can get your dope to agree to. If your practices and supervision and training were up to the task, there wouldn’t be any need to pay the dope, would there?

It all depends on what you desire. I’ve seen principal brokers who were paid a straight salary plus a bonus based upon production. Others are strictly ‘bonus’ oriented. Yet others use a combination of a base salary along with earned commissions on transactions which they generate themselves.

There are no hard and fast rules about principal compensation. You can devise whatever works for your firm.