422 We Are Moving: Buying and Selling a Home While Nine Months Pregnant

**Episode 422:** Rain or Shine Podcast
**Host:** Kelsey Reidl, The Rain or Shine Podcast

We Are Moving: The Dream Home, the Deal That Fell Through, and Selling Two Days Past My Due Date

Episode 422: Rain or Shine Podcast
Host: Kelsey Reidl, The Rain or Shine Podcast

Quick Summary:

Host Kelsey Reidl is back from a short break with three-week-old Blair in her lap and a big life update: the family is moving. She tells the full story, from finding their dream home on the five-year anniversary of her mom's death to almost walking away after the inspection, an offer that collapsed a week after signing, and a final sale that closed with her two days overdue.

In This Episode:

Welcoming baby Blair Elizabeth, and why the show took a break
How dueling emotions, deep joy and grief, can exist at the same time
July 19th: the anniversary of her mom's passing and the day the dream home was listed
The "signs" that made the house feel meant to be, including her favourite number, 43
Going from 50/50 to 80/20 in four days, and the 80/10/10 rule for buying a home
Choosing community over waterfront: why the family drew a box around their small town
Winning a bidding war, then nearly pulling out after the inspection
Getting a house ready to sell in four days, and why you should do everything your stager says
Living out of the house for all of August during showings
The 9 PM knock, the "dream offer" and the financing collapse
Relisting with the agent in Greece and selling two days past the due date
Lessons learned about big decisions, asking for help and letting go of outcomes

Key Takeaways:

Don't rush big decisions. Feelings can swing from yes to no to yes in three days. Give yourself time and space before you commit.
Use the 80/10/10 rule when buying. Love 80% of the home, plan to change 10%, and accept that you'll live with the last 10%.
Do everything the stager says. Four days of repairs, paint and decluttering finished six years of projects and helped the house sell.
Ask for help, specifically. A place to work, someone to watch the dog, a mother-in-law with a supply list: people want to show up.
Control the outputs, not the outcome. You can't control the market or the buyer's financing. You can make every showing your best one.

Memorable Quotes:

"Sometimes you can love what you have and know that the best decision for you and your family is on the other side of change."
"We controlled the outputs. We couldn't control the outcome."
"With big decisions come big emotions, and it's okay to give yourself time and space."

Resources Mentioned:

Kelsey’s Instagram: @kelseyreidl
Kelsey’s Website: www.KelseyReidl.com
Episode 131: Secrets Out! We're Moving..., the 2020 announcement that we were leaving Toronto
Episode 161: Moving to a Small Town & Impacts on My Business, six months in (listen on Spotify)
The 80/10/10 rule for buying a home
realtor.ca, where the listing was presented
Port Dover, Ontario, one of the family's day trips during showings
Coming soon on the show: Blair's birth story, plus episodes on pregnancy and preparing for maternity leave

About the Guest

Kelsey Reidl is an entrepreneur, fractional CMO, and host of Rain or Shine (formerly Visionary Life). She's been podcasting for 8 years, helping entrepreneurs show up consistently and build sustainable businesses. She runs the Wave Mastermind and specializes in marketing strategy, website design, and business growth. Kelsey is a mom to a 2-year-old, an avid mountain biker, and a firm believer in the "rain or shine" mentality.

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Kelsey: Hey, visionaries. Welcome back to the show. This is a really special episode. You might have noticed that the Rain or Shine podcast took a brief hiatus over the last few weeks, and that's because my husband and I welcomed our new baby girl into the world. Her name is Blair Elizabeth, and she was born on September 3rd. I have the entire birth story to share with you, along with more content on pregnancy and preparing for maternity leave.
But in this episode, I'm going to talk about something different: another exciting life milestone. We are moving.
Six years ago, I recorded an episode when we moved from Toronto, where I'd spent a decade. Back in 2020, we moved to a small town about an hour and a half outside the city. In that episode, I talked about why we decided to leave the big city, where we ended up, and why I was fearful. Honestly, I was concerned about how the move would impact my business and what our quality of life would be compared to living in an amazing Toronto neighbourhood.
I'll link that episode in the show notes, because I don't even remember it. That was six years ago. You can scroll back to around October or November 2020 of the Rain or Shine podcast to find it.
But here I am, sitting down at the mic again with a baby girl in my lap. She may wake up at any moment. And I'm recording another episode titled "We Are Moving."
This was not in the cards for this chapter of life, because there's already so much change. I was pregnant for the last nine months. We have a newborn. I have a toddler who's almost three. I keep saying two and a half, but he's almost three. And my husband just made a major career change. Adding in a move, buying a new home, selling our current home, staging, decluttering, packing, changing over insurance, signing papers with lawyers, getting bank drafts: none of that was in the cards for this season. But it's happening.
Dueling emotions
I might go blank during this episode, because part of me is so overwhelmed and feels so much chaos, and part of me feels peaceful, confident and calm. I'm not sure how those emotions can all exist together. Maybe they can't. But I often feel dualities of emotion: the happiest of happy and the saddest of sad.
I do believe dueling emotions can exist, because I look at my daughter Blair, who's three weeks old, and I'm the happiest of happy. Of course, the best days of your life are when you meet your kids for the first time. Giving birth to Freddy and giving birth to Blair are my two favourite days of my life. So when I look at Blair right now, I'm in pure bliss mode.
And the weirdest thing is, she looks like my mom, who passed away five years ago. So I feel the saddest of sad at the same time that I'm a proud, glowing, passionate mother looking at my new daughter.
The short version
So, where do I even begin? If I were to summarize it: the day we found our dream home was also the five-year anniversary of my mom's death. Five weeks after finding that home, we almost walked away. It was one of the hardest nights of our lives, talking about whether we were going to pull out. I remember my husband saying, and now our friends and I laugh about it, "There's a 0% chance we're going to live in this house." That's a whole story for another day.
It was a rollercoaster of emotions. We put our house up for sale. We staged it. We had a confirmed offer. They pulled out. We were selling the house up until basically the day I gave birth. If you've ever been through buying and selling a home, had an offer fall through, or not known whether you'd get the home you bid on, you know all this. Then add career changes, being nine months pregnant and not knowing when baby was coming. Let's just say I was praying every day that I'd be overdue by at least a week.
July 19th
Let me take you back to July 19th. I remember this day because my sister's birthday is July 18th. Five years ago, the day before my sister's birthday, I got a call from my dad, my sister and my brother-in-law: "Where are you? You need to get to the Huntsville Hospital right away." On my sister's birthday, we were in the hospital all day, and on July 19th, my mom was gone.
Those days will always trigger memories. My sister's birthday is now a challenging time, for her especially, because it's also a reminder of what's coming the next day, the 19th.
So: July 19th, a Sunday. I wake up and a friend has texted our girls' group that the house is for sale. I say "the house" because it had been preparing to sell for quite a while. We'd seen the dumpster out front. Someone had talked to the owner, and she said she'd sell in the spring. Spring came and it never got listed. It only got listed in July, about six months after my husband and I first caught wind of it.
As soon as I heard that this house on this street was going to sell, I thought: that's literally one of the dream streets I want to live on. Truly the street I would choose. And when I looked at the house, I had an overwhelming sense that it was meant to be ours. I don't know how to describe it, except that every time I looked at it, I started imagining life inside it. This is weird to say, but the house just had really good energy.
The signs
There were a few signs, little nudges from the universe if you want to call them that, that supported this vision of us moving. These are kind of random, maybe a bit woo-woo for you.
My favourite number is 43. When the listing came out, there were 43 photos. The house was four bedrooms and three bathrooms, so side by side that was four, three. The next number in the listing also said 43. I immediately saw 43, 43, 43, and to me, that was a good sign.
Another sign was that it was listed on the five-year anniversary. It felt like a sign from my mom. She was one of the biggest supporters of the home we currently live in. I remember her here on the day we moved in, saying, "I'm so happy for you guys. This is the start of your new life." She was here every day helping me unpack. We shared a lot of good memories here in the year we lived here while she was still alive.
There were other signs that we were starting to feel complete in this home. We had a list of projects we were going to do before baby arrived. We started some and got quotes on others, but didn't follow through. As much as we adore the space, and it truly is a dream home for us, we felt it might be time to move forward. We also got notices in our mailbox about rezoning in our area, which made us a little nervous.
I paid attention to these signs. I didn't base the entire decision on them, but I found them really interesting.
Deciding to make an offer
We had to move fast. We called our real estate agent and saw the house on Monday, about 24 hours after it was listed. Then we decided to think on it. It's one of the biggest financial decisions of your life, and we didn't want to make an abrupt one. We thought about it on Tuesday. We thought about it on Wednesday. We called a lot of family, and on Thursday morning two family members met us for a second walkthrough.
Initially we were leaning 50/50. Maybe 60/40 by Tuesday, 70/30 by Wednesday, 80/20 by Thursday. After that Thursday walkthrough, we said, "Okay, this house is going to sell fast. It is our dream home."
There's a rule in real estate called 80/10/10: love 80% of the home, 10% you know you can change or invest budget in changing, and 10% you'll just have to live with. This house definitely met the 80/10/10 rule.
For context, the hardest part for us is that we currently live on the water. So we're giving up something great for something great. That was our 10%. It's really hard to find a dream home on the water, and there's limited waterfront real estate in our town.
We've decided to keep building roots in this town. Anyone can pick up, leave and go find waterfront property, but we want to be in a very specific community. Everyone chooses where they live for different reasons. Some people choose based on where their family lives. Some choose based on entrepreneurship. If building my company were my number one priority, I'd probably live in Toronto. But in this season of life, family and community are our number one core values when it comes to where we live. So we drew a box around our small town and knew exactly what we wanted: how many bedrooms, what neighbourhood, what budget. This house fit the 80/10/10 perfectly.
The bidding
By Thursday at lunchtime, we were writing up an offer. Our real estate agent worked quickly, and we put in a bid. We also wrote a letter, because everybody writes letters these days. We didn't with our current home, because it was a private sale. In the letter, we explained that we live down the road, we have a toddler and a baby on the way, and we're passionate about having more space for our growing family.
Immediately after we submitted, we got a call: there was another offer, and it was higher. So now we're in negotiations, and it feels like 50/50 whether we even get the home. You fall in love with a place enough to make a massive financial bet on it, only to find out someone else wants it just as badly.
That day I was at the bike park with Freddy, very pregnant, going back and forth on bids and conditions. I could not get my brain to settle down. Neither could Dave. We were in overdrive. Will we get this home? Will it fall through? Were we too late?
That evening, we found out our bid was accepted. Dave got the call from our agent when he was about 10 minutes from home. He walked in, looked at me and said, "Well?" And I said, "Well, what? You didn't call me." It was just me and Freddy, and he said, "We're celebrating," and pulled out a bottle of champagne. Obviously I was pregnant, but I had a sip. We cheered, we wooed, we yayed. I have the cutest little photo of us. We sat on the porch saying, "Oh my gosh, this just happened."
The inspection, and almost walking away
The sale was conditional on a home inspection, which we booked for the next week. My husband, my father-in-law and the home inspector went. It didn't go well.
There was a lot going on in our lives at the time: a lot of change, and some personal stress I won't get into. After the inspection, Dave came home and said, "It's not the house." There were a couple of line items that, in his mind, weren't reconcilable. So we had some really tough conversations.
If you've been through this, you know that when you pour your heart into an offer, it's because you really love the home. For the last week we'd been imagining our new life there, our second baby, where we'd settle for the rest of our lives. It was really, really emotional. By the end of the night, we were 90% decided to let the home go.
I was trusting that Dave was right, even though it hurt me deep down. I get very attached when I pour my heart into something. When I say yes, I'm all in. If I say I'll be there, I'll be there. If I say I'll do the thing, I'll do the thing. If I say we're moving, we are moving. But I had to trust Dave.
The next day, after more hard conversations, he went to work and I started asking him a few clarifying questions. Eventually there was a reversal of the reversal. After some tears, and after calling in some backup inspectors, we decided it was the right house. That was a whole emotional rollercoaster.
Getting our house ready to sell
So what happens next? I'm weeks away from my due date, and who knows if I'll go early. We need to sell our house to finance the next one, so we decide to list.
We were supposed to go away on the August long weekend and do fun things with the family. Instead, we cancelled all our plans to declutter, stage, repair and tidy. We went hard for four days: baseboard repairs, cleaning, decluttering, garden and landscaping work, paint touch-ups, new light fixtures. We went crazy. I had no idea how important it is to get your home ready to sell.
My mother-in-law was a rock star. I was nearly nine months pregnant with insane back pain (I think it's called sciatica), so I was basically useless, other than watching Freddy, my busy toddler. Sorry, I have milk brain right now. Breastfeeding brain. My mother-in-law showed up with a list, pen and paper and buckets of supplies and said, "We are getting this house ready to sell." My husband was all in, and we worked tirelessly, day after day.
If I could share one piece of advice: if you're selling and a stager comes through, do what they say. Our real estate agent paid for a stager for us, because it helps you get maximum value for the home. The stager told us to paint our front door black, do touch-ups, remove things, change the hardware on our kitchen cabinets, declutter, take shelves down. Kind of crazy stuff. I looked at it thinking, "What the heck? Who has time for this? I'm not doing all that." And my husband said, "No, we are doing absolutely everything on this list."
So we went at it, and the house transformed in four days. All the projects we'd wanted to do for six years, we did in four days. So many kudos to my mother-in-law for organizing it all. She dropped everything in her calendar to help.
Living out of the house in August
The stagers came through and made it look beautiful and spacious. I said it needed to be listed at least two or three weeks before my due date, so it would be off the market by the time baby came.
The listing went up, and it was highly viewed, so we knew there was action. We had at least 20 showings in the first week or two, plus an open house. The logistics are insane. I was still working, and Freddy is only in daycare part-time, so we'd get a text: "You have a showing booked for 11 AM this morning."
If you've been through this, you know: no laundry, nothing on the counter, coffee maker away, no toddler toys, no clothes, no soap out. You clean to the nth degree and make sure it's spotless, with nothing personal anywhere. Move the cars out of the driveway. Move Freddy's bikes into the garage. Make it look organized. Evacuate.
For pretty much all of August, we lived out of the house. Thank goodness the weather was nice. We spent evenings downtown and at the bike park. I worked from friends' houses. I called a friend down the road, a friend in the town over, my dad: "I need a place with Wi-Fi. I can't be in my house today. Who's helping me out?" We went to the beach, to Port Dover for the day, to a local farm, to a café down the road. You name it, we spent August there. We couldn't even mess up the backyard. We kept the lawn immaculate. It was nuts.
The 9 PM knock, and the offer that fell through
We got an offer about seven days into showings, and that's a crazy story on its own. A couple knocked on our door at 9 PM, the night before we were collecting bids. They said, "We know this is crazy, but can you please tour us through your home? We can't get hold of our real estate agent. We both work tomorrow, we really like this home, and we think we want to buy it. We know you're accepting offers tomorrow."
Dave came out back, where I was with Freddy, and said, "Kels, this is really weird, but this couple seems interested." I said, "Bring them in. I don't care at this point." So we showed them through. They were a really kind older couple, in love with the house, kissing and hugging and saying, "Oh my God, this is our dream place."
Long story short, on offer day we got three great offers. The couple who knocked at 9 PM wanted it the most, and they put in the offer. We thought, "Thank goodness we gave them the time of day." They were a little odd. Looking back, was there a red flag? Maybe. But we signed. The deal was conditional on financing and inspection, which is super normal, and not conditional on the sale of a home. They told us they both had jobs and were both selling their homes anyway. We felt pretty good about it.
Then, about a week later, at 7 AM on a Tuesday, we woke up to a message from our real estate agent: "This is not the message you guys want to read right now. They have pulled their offer due to financing."
That was the end of that offer. It was our dream offer. We got what we wanted, and in the blink of an eye, it was gone. Honestly, it was shocking.
In that moment, we had to trust that what's meant to be will be. We had to surrender to the fact that we can't control the outcome. We had to be adaptable. This wasn't the timeline we planned, but were we going to sulk, pull the house and stop the process? Or were we going to move forward, relist, re-stage and trust there was someone else out there who'd be a good steward of this home? That was the mentality, not "Screw these people," because that wasn't going to serve us.
Of course it was stressful. I remember the look on Dave's face. He was devastated. I was too, but I told myself: trust that something better will come.
Relisting, and selling two days past my due date
We were about a week and a half from my due date. We relisted. Our real estate agent was on vacation in Greece for the next two weeks, with a seven-hour time difference, and we wondered how anyone would reach her. We just trusted.
We went through the whole process again and took many road trips. Luckily, Dave was on one-month paternity leave by this point. A week went by, showing after showing, and eventually we heard there was interest. We got one offer. It wasn't what we wanted, so we declined it and trusted. We got another offer. Not what we wanted. We declined it and trusted. We got a third offer. It was what we wanted. We negotiated and had a good feeling.
We'd never met this buyer. She put in her offer a couple of days before my due date. That was insane. We were thinking, "What if I go into labour and we can't do the home inspection?" So we accepted and asked, "Can you do your inspection tomorrow? I'm planning a home birth, so I can't delay this. We need this house sold, signed and sealed."
Then we found out she lived hours away and couldn't get in for an inspection until the following week, two days after my due date. So we said, "Okay, book it." We'd trust it would work out, and if not, we'd figure it out. We'd evacuate the house for her inspection after the birth and hang out at the neighbour's with a one-day-old baby if we had to.
Luckily, the inspection happened while I was two days overdue and still hadn't gone into labour. We waited 12 to 24 hours to hear how it went, and eventually we found out the house was sold.
Once all the papers were signed, I felt my body fully relax. I could fully lean into the fact that it was safe to go into labour. That wrapped up the entire journey of buying a new home, selling our current one and wondering, "Is this the right decision? How is this all going to work out?" I really do think it did.
Lessons learned
There are a million lessons from this process: business lessons, life lessons, relationship lessons.
Number one: live one day at a time. From one day to the next, you can go from "We're buying our dream home," to "It's not the right home," to "It is." With big decisions come big emotions, and it's okay to give yourself time and space. Maybe someone asks you to deliver a presentation, and you immediately say yes. The next day you wake up nervous. Give yourself another day. Give yourself time. Don't rush big decisions.
Number two: ask friends for help. We asked people to watch our dog, to help us clean and stage, and to house us while we were displaced with our toddler all summer. Our friends were so gracious. They knew how busy we were and went above and beyond to make sure we felt comfortable through this crazy process.
Number three: what's meant to be will be. There are situations where you can control the outputs. We controlled how the listing was presented on realtor.ca, how the house was staged and what it looked like when people came in. Before every showing, we gave 110% to make sure the house looked lovely. We didn't give up toward the end or get lazy. Every time, we put the coffee maker away. Every time, we cleaned the bathroom. Every time, we made sure the front yard was clear of droppings and leaves. We went above and beyond, every single time.
So we controlled the outputs. We couldn't control the outcome. Did I know if someone would make an offer? No. Did we know if the house would sell before or after I gave birth? No. But we could trust that we gave it our all. There's only so much you can do about the market, but through every showing (I'm sure we had 40 or 50) we made sure the house was showing its best side.
What's next
So that's the story of our new home. We're excited to build a new life, or build on our current one. I've heard that every time you move your physical space, it cracks open so many other changes in your life. So I'm excited. I'm also scared and terrified to learn a new neighbourhood and a new home.
We're so comfortable and at peace in our current home. Giving it up was a really challenging decision, because I love our cozy home. I love our property. I love our neighbourhood. I love our life right here. But sometimes you can love what you have and know that the best decision for you and your family is on the other side of change. That's exactly what we're going through.
I'll share more behind the scenes on my Instagram, @kelseyreidl. I just wanted to share a life update. I hope this was interesting and relevant. Maybe you're going through a move, or thinking about one. I love you all, and I'll catch you in the next episode.

422 We Are Moving: Buying and Selling a Home While Nine Months Pregnant