The Emotional Side of Selling: What No One Tells You About Moving On

Selling a home isn’t just a financial transaction – it’s a deeply emotional event. (Part 1 in a three-part series.)

If you’ve ever thought about selling your home and immediately felt a knot in your stomach, you’re not alone. Even in the best of circumstances, selling a home is one of life’s most emotionally loaded experiences. It’s not just about signing paperwork or packing boxes – it’s about leaving a place tied to your memories, routines, and identity.

And the truth is, almost every seller feels some level of stress.

This summer, respected real estate media and marketing company 1000WATT released an original research report, “The Emotional Landscape of Homeselling,” that explored the feelings of home sellers to help real estate professionals better understand their clients. The study, based on a June 2025 survey of 1,000 U.S. adults who sold a home in the past five years, focuses on sellers’ perceptions of real estate agents, their fears, anxieties during the process, and emotional connections to their homes.

As the report’s authors noted, there is plenty of attention and reporting on a buyer’s journey on “the dream to homeownership.” This new report “seeks to explore the fears, strains, and joys of human beings selling the place in which they live. This is becoming more salient by the day as inventory swells, demand flags, and the market balance tilts towards buyers.”

The Top Worries Sellers Face

When asked about their biggest fears, recent home sellers admitted they were bracing for disaster, and their most common fears included:

Not getting the price they wanted (25%)
The home is taking too long to sell (22%)
Last-minute deal collapse (18%)
Inspection issues (16%)
Not finding a new place in time (9%)

Sound familiar? But here’s something reassuring: most of those worries never came true. In fact, nearly 70% of sellers said their worst fear didn’t happen at all.

Why Stress Still Shows Up

Even if the worst doesn’t happen, the anticipation of it can weigh heavily. That’s because selling a home isn’t just a financial transaction – it’s a moment of exposure. Strangers walking through your rooms, judging the place you’ve loved, with feedback that feels personal, even when it isn’t. And the knowledge that one unexpected twist could delay your plans.

It’s no wonder so many sellers describe the process as overwhelming. Stress peaks not only at the obvious moments, like negotiations, but also in the smaller, surprising ones – overhearing a buyer’s offhand comment at a showing or realizing the inspector found a minor issue.

You’re Not Alone – And You’re Not Doing It Wrong

The emotional strain of a home sale doesn’t mean you’re unprepared or doing something wrong; it means you’re human. Selling a home means balancing both practical decisions and powerful emotions.

One way to ease the emotional load is to name your biggest worries at the start. Write them down (you can even make it fun, like “The Worry List I’ll Laugh About Later”) and share it with a trusted friend or advisor. Sometimes, just putting the fear into words takes away some of its weight. And when challenges do pop up, you’ll be better prepared to handle them. Here are some other steps you can take to keep the focus on what new opportunities await with a new home:

Track What You Can Control – Circle the items on your worry list that are within your control (like decluttering or timing) and concentrate on that.
Talk It Through – Have a 15-minute conversation with someone you trust about your biggest selling worry. Sometimes saying it out loud is enough to shrink it down to size and get different perspectives from friends and family who have been there themselves.
Start a “Goodbye Journal”- Jot down favorite and funny memories from your home as you prepare to sell. This keeps the positive emotions at the center instead of only focusing on stress. (And maybe even have a page or two for “Things I Won’t Miss About Living Here!”)
Visualize What Comes Next – Spend 10 minutes picturing what life will look like in your new home or neighborhood. What will the first holiday gathering look like? Will you have a better commute? Is there a new dog park nearby? What new restaurants have you been hungering to try out? Focusing on the future can help balance the weight of letting go.

And then schedule a “clarity session” with a professional Realtor®! One surprising finding in 1000WATT’s report was the anxiety that sellers reported choosing an agent, with one in three responding they found it stressful and 47% saying they didn’t know what to look for in an agent. Corcoran McEnearney agents have the expertise and hard-won wisdom earned by guiding clients through the emotional minefield that can come with selling a home. Let us help take some of that pressure off your shoulders so that you can focus on closing an important chapter in your real estate journey… and making joyful plans for the next adventure!

Next in this series: Part 2 — More Than a House: The Emotional Goodbye.