June 8, 2025 • 12 mins
Jeff Peterson is based in Cary, North Carolina. On today's show we are talking about the intersection of active business and real estate and the various twists in the road that make the journey take an unexpected route.
You can connect with Jeff at TurtleShellRentals.com.
You can also find his new book "Are We There Yet" on Amazon.
---------------
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Real Estate Special Podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. This is the WEEKEND edition
where we interview notable people from the world of real
estate investing. Today is no exception.
We have a great guest all the way from Cary, NC Welcome to the
show, Jeff Peterson. Thank you, Victor.
I appreciate being on your show.Appreciate you you inviting me.
(00:21):
Well, great to have you here. Now, Jeff, you come from the
world of business, but you're also fairly active in real
estate as well. I'm keen to have this
conversation because there's always this feeling that real
estate is a passive business andit's not.
So I'd love to get your perspective on someone who's got
1 foot in active service businesses as well as someone
(00:44):
who's active in real estate. But before we do, perhaps give a
little bit of your back story and how you got to this point in
your journey. Sure, I'd love to.
You know what, it's funny, you mentioned you're brought up
about real estate being passive,which that is one of my huge pet
peeves when I'm listening to either podcasts or you're going
on a social media and you hear everyone talking about passive
(01:05):
income, passive income with realestate, which I think is that
biggest misnomer that there is, you know, So I'm sure you
realize it as well. There's nothing passive about
it. You know, maybe it's not a nine
to five, but there's nothing passive about it.
So my back story though, I started in business when I was
21, old actually on my birthday and it was a small reupholstery
(01:28):
shop that I opened up in the front bedroom of a 2 bedroom
house that I was renting. And when I say, when I say I
didn't have anything, I mean I had less than nothing.
If you can imagine, re upholstery is not really a high
ticket, a high ticket item. But I was young and I knew how
to do it or I thought I knew howto do it.
And it was way too, you know, toget started for me in the
(01:51):
beginning. But of course, my passion, I
always wanted real estate, but that was the first business.
And of course, I used my business and businesses down the
road to fuel the real estate. And that's kind of, but that's
how I started with it. So today you're active in some
almost medium sized developmentsinvolving hundreds of units and
(02:13):
you're several different producttypes.
You want to talk a bit about that?
Yeah. So I actually, we, we do do a
lot of different real estate. We do some commercial
residential, short term and alsoapartments and mixed-use.
So the biggest project that I'vebeen working on that took me
over 10 years, but now it's justfinishing up.
We're just, you know, the apartments are done and we're
(02:35):
doing the interior fit UPS on the retail is a project called
Peterson Station and it is in Holly Springs.
So it's at the it's where three towns actually come together,
Holly Springs, Cary and Apex, NC, but it's in Holly Springs.
So to do that I had to assemble 10 different properties to get
the acreage together. But the initial property and how
(02:59):
it started was 20 years ago or 25 years ago, I bought a small
trailer park on the corner of that piece of property.
And I've owned and managed that trailer park for years.
And finally, Holly Springs came by with water and sewer.
And this was just in the county,so we didn't have any capacity
really to grow at that time. But when they came by with water
(03:21):
and sewer, that's when I startedthinking about, you know, making
it into something much bigger. And so that's how I got started.
I have this strategy which I call buy on the line, move the
line. And one of the things that that
embodies it can be that arbitrary line that exists in
many different communities. And on one side you've got a hot
(03:41):
gentrified neighborhood and on the other side you've got all
you may be in the hood. That's an arbitrary line that's
movable. What's more difficult is if it's
a municipal boundary or if there's a railway line or a
freeway or something like that. That's a much more difficult
situation to move that line. But if you can, then there's a
lot of value to be created in that entire process.
(04:02):
In your case, you had the addition of services.
That is a linchpin that multiplies the value of land
tenfold, sometimes a hundredfold.
What was the realization or whenwas the realization that that
potential existed? You know, like I said, the
prompt borders 3 different municipalities.
(04:23):
We knew that water and sewer would be coming, just didn't
know when. I I knew that it was going to
come in five years, 10 years, 15years.
It actually came in 15 years from when I first purchased
property. Or maybe it wasn't that long.
It seemed like it was that long,but but I knew that eventually
it would come. In the meantime, though, it was
income producing. So I'm a small operator, which
(04:43):
means that I can't just go out, out into the countryside and
speculate on a piece of property.
It has to return value to me. Or did early on.
Now, now not so much. But early on I had to have a
value on that property where I could make money on it because I
couldn't just sit and wait for wait for the development.
I mean, I'm sure, you know, many, many stories of developers
(05:07):
that have gone belly up because they're waiting for the project
to to develop and waiting for the timing.
And in the meantime they go broke.
So, you know, I've seen more often than not where people will
try to develop a property and it's the second developer that
actually makes it go of it and does very well.
The first guy went broke trying,you know, so or, you know, a lot
(05:29):
of times it's the economy. The economy changes.
Like that's what happened with us when this particular piece of
property, when I first went to rezone it, when water and sewer
came along and I rezoned it neighborhood commercial, well,
that was back in O eight, I think it was O 8.
Great time for that. Oh, yeah.
So I quickly realized I started moving off the mobile homes and
(05:52):
then realized it was like, Oh no, I'm just, I've just really
got myself into something. So I went back to the town and
said, hey, I want to put some ofthose trailers back for the time
being because it's useless to me.
They said, Oh no, you're no longer a trailer park.
Now you are a you're zone for commercial.
So you can't do that. So I sat on the property for
several years after that doing exactly what I said I would
(06:14):
never do, waiting for the development to happen.
So that's what it was a it was alesson.
I don't know if I would have done things different if if, you
know, looking back over again, which it pays to reflect
sometimes, but I don't know if Iwould have done anything
different. It's just the way the economy
went, and I didn't see that coming.
Well, and it's, it's so true because if you had said to
(06:36):
someone in the middle of 2019 that their risk management plan
should include a global pandemicand the economy would be shut
down for two years, people wouldsay, what are you?
Not exactly. It's funny because during the
pandemic now, I was starting to do some things at the beach
because I was spending a lot of time at the beach anyway, and my
(06:57):
project was kind of stalled on the in the financing end on
Peterson Station. So I had enough to do some
things at the beach and I started doing more and more
there. Well, then the pandemic hits,
right? So when the pandemic hits, there
I was under construction for therestaurant, under construction
for renovating these apartments that I was also doing these
small, small units and we had just came to a grinding halt on
(07:22):
now. Now what do we do?
Right? So we continued on.
I was like, well, we're already pregnant.
We got it. We got to finish, you know, so
we so we did. But that's kind of when I really
got going on the short term rentals was during the pandemic,
right? You know, right before the
pandemic, but really got going during the pandemic.
And it was a a huge, huge win for us.
And there was very small projects, renovation projects is
(07:45):
was kind of what I became specialized in doing that with
my son doing a lot of renovations and every property
that we touched just turned to gold.
It's really kind of amazing the way that that has gone.
When I look at short term rentals, it's a little bit like
the gig economy because the barrier to entry for say,
(08:05):
another Uber driver to enter thefleet is very, very low.
And what that will eventually become as it becomes more and
more commoditized is the proverbial race to the bottom
where everyone is suffering A tolerable level of pain but no
one's making any money. Unless unless you have a
situation where the property is in a unique location, it is
(08:27):
scarce, it is zoned, and the demand supplied, imbalance is
going to persist for a good longtime, and it sounds like that's
what you focused on. You're exactly right.
They're not making any more beach.
There's there is some growth there.
There's a lot of growth and there's a lot of people coming
in, but there's only so much beach.
(08:48):
There's a, you know, it's a, it's a 30 mile beach and there's
two bridges to the island and that's it.
So, so even though you have moreand more coming, you'll never
meet up with that demand. I mean, we just book like crazy.
Even even when things slow down.And I heard of other short term
hosts, Airbnb hosts, they're suffering.
They're down 20 and 30%. I was like, I don't, I don't see
(09:10):
that here where we are, you know, in real estate, the adage
of, you know, location is everything is doubly true for
this, for this kind of property,because when you're looking at
short term rentals, I mean, you have to be extremely desirable,
you know, extremely desirable location and provide the
services too. So we have a, we have a great
team that that does that. I love it.
(09:30):
Yeah. That that is so key because one
of the problems, you know, I often tell people that brand is
important when I think about, let's say, imagine you were to
go build a hotel and there's in fact 2 hotels side by side on
the beach. They're both the same size.
They both charge the same nightly rate.
One of them's called the best Beach Hotel and the other one's
(09:53):
called Hilton. Which one of you pick?
Right, right. The best Beach Hotel might
indeed be the best Beach Hotel, but people don't want to do the
due diligence to they're lazy. They don't want to figure out
whether that's true. So the brand serves as a proxy
for that due diligence. And in the world of short term
rentals, there is almost no brand.
(10:13):
And that's part of the that's part of the weakness.
So if you're going to have a product of that sort, it really
has to stand out in some other means.
And that's one of the one of thebig challenges in the short term
rental business is it's almost devoid of brand because you've
basically given that brand over to VRBO or Airbnb.
You're you're exactly correct. You know that that touches on
(10:35):
something that that we have found.
Airbnb is the big £800 gorilla. I mean, they control everything.
And now you've got Verbo and there's home away and there's
several other ones, but they're very, you're very dependent on
them. So what we try to do and
realizing that we wanted to, youknow, identify ourselves, we
created our own company and we do a lot of direct bookings as
(10:57):
well called turtle shell properties, turtle shell
rentals. So we do that ourselves.
And the the idea, of course, is that we're not dependent on
Airbnb or VRBO if you know, theyare so heavy-handed in their
approach to the homeowners or you know, that the Airbnb hosts.
So you try to get people to cometo you on the second, third or
(11:20):
fourth booking. You don't go to your website.
And that way you're not in competition with 200 new Airbnb
hosts, you know, so, so we do try to create our own brand, to
your point. I love it.
Well, Jeff, if folks want to connect, if they want to learn
more, what's the best way? Well, any, any, you know, on the
(11:40):
website, of course we've got turtle shellrentals.com.
Maybe you'll have some show notes.
We can share those on there. Of course, my direct emails,
jmp521@aol.com. And that is, I know I'm one of
the last people on AOL. So it's not like you can't find
me, right? So it's, I still have that.
I did just finish a book. So I, I wrote this book and it
kind of covers my real estate and small business journey
(12:04):
through life, you know, but and that's called are we there yet?
And that's on Amazon. Any number of those places that
you can find me on those pretty easily.
Awesome. Well, Jeff, great to connect.
And for the listeners home, definitely connect with Jeff
Peterson. Links will be in the show notes
as well as a link to his new book.
Are We There Yet? And in the meantime, have an
awesome rest of your weekend, Gomake some great things happen,
(12:25):
and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.
Welcome to the Real Estate Special Podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. This is the WEEKEND edition
where we interview notable people from the world of real
estate investing. Today is no exception.
We have a great guest all the way from Cary, NC Welcome to the
show, Jeff Peterson. Thank you, Victor.
I appreciate being on your show.Appreciate you you inviting me.
(00:21):
Well, great to have you here. Now, Jeff, you come from the
world of business, but you're also fairly active in real
estate as well. I'm keen to have this
conversation because there's always this feeling that real
estate is a passive business andit's not.
So I'd love to get your perspective on someone who's got
1 foot in active service businesses as well as someone
(00:44):
who's active in real estate. But before we do, perhaps give a
little bit of your back story and how you got to this point in
your journey. Sure, I'd love to.
You know what, it's funny, you mentioned you're brought up
about real estate being passive,which that is one of my huge pet
peeves when I'm listening to either podcasts or you're going
on a social media and you hear everyone talking about passive
(01:05):
income, passive income with realestate, which I think is that
biggest misnomer that there is, you know, So I'm sure you
realize it as well. There's nothing passive about
it. You know, maybe it's not a nine
to five, but there's nothing passive about it.
So my back story though, I started in business when I was
21, old actually on my birthday and it was a small reupholstery
(01:28):
shop that I opened up in the front bedroom of a 2 bedroom
house that I was renting. And when I say, when I say I
didn't have anything, I mean I had less than nothing.
If you can imagine, re upholstery is not really a high
ticket, a high ticket item. But I was young and I knew how
to do it or I thought I knew howto do it.
And it was way too, you know, toget started for me in the
(01:51):
beginning. But of course, my passion, I
always wanted real estate, but that was the first business.
And of course, I used my business and businesses down the
road to fuel the real estate. And that's kind of, but that's
how I started with it. So today you're active in some
almost medium sized developmentsinvolving hundreds of units and
(02:13):
you're several different producttypes.
You want to talk a bit about that?
Yeah. So I actually, we, we do do a
lot of different real estate. We do some commercial
residential, short term and alsoapartments and mixed-use.
So the biggest project that I'vebeen working on that took me
over 10 years, but now it's justfinishing up.
We're just, you know, the apartments are done and we're
(02:35):
doing the interior fit UPS on the retail is a project called
Peterson Station and it is in Holly Springs.
So it's at the it's where three towns actually come together,
Holly Springs, Cary and Apex, NC, but it's in Holly Springs.
So to do that I had to assemble 10 different properties to get
the acreage together. But the initial property and how
(02:59):
it started was 20 years ago or 25 years ago, I bought a small
trailer park on the corner of that piece of property.
And I've owned and managed that trailer park for years.
And finally, Holly Springs came by with water and sewer.
And this was just in the county,so we didn't have any capacity
really to grow at that time. But when they came by with water
(03:21):
and sewer, that's when I startedthinking about, you know, making
it into something much bigger. And so that's how I got started.
I have this strategy which I call buy on the line, move the
line. And one of the things that that
embodies it can be that arbitrary line that exists in
many different communities. And on one side you've got a hot
(03:41):
gentrified neighborhood and on the other side you've got all
you may be in the hood. That's an arbitrary line that's
movable. What's more difficult is if it's
a municipal boundary or if there's a railway line or a
freeway or something like that. That's a much more difficult
situation to move that line. But if you can, then there's a
lot of value to be created in that entire process.
(04:02):
In your case, you had the addition of services.
That is a linchpin that multiplies the value of land
tenfold, sometimes a hundredfold.
What was the realization or whenwas the realization that that
potential existed? You know, like I said, the
prompt borders 3 different municipalities.
(04:23):
We knew that water and sewer would be coming, just didn't
know when. I I knew that it was going to
come in five years, 10 years, 15years.
It actually came in 15 years from when I first purchased
property. Or maybe it wasn't that long.
It seemed like it was that long,but but I knew that eventually
it would come. In the meantime, though, it was
income producing. So I'm a small operator, which
(04:43):
means that I can't just go out, out into the countryside and
speculate on a piece of property.
It has to return value to me. Or did early on.
Now, now not so much. But early on I had to have a
value on that property where I could make money on it because I
couldn't just sit and wait for wait for the development.
I mean, I'm sure, you know, many, many stories of developers
(05:07):
that have gone belly up because they're waiting for the project
to to develop and waiting for the timing.
And in the meantime they go broke.
So, you know, I've seen more often than not where people will
try to develop a property and it's the second developer that
actually makes it go of it and does very well.
The first guy went broke trying,you know, so or, you know, a lot
(05:29):
of times it's the economy. The economy changes.
Like that's what happened with us when this particular piece of
property, when I first went to rezone it, when water and sewer
came along and I rezoned it neighborhood commercial, well,
that was back in O eight, I think it was O 8.
Great time for that. Oh, yeah.
So I quickly realized I started moving off the mobile homes and
(05:52):
then realized it was like, Oh no, I'm just, I've just really
got myself into something. So I went back to the town and
said, hey, I want to put some ofthose trailers back for the time
being because it's useless to me.
They said, Oh no, you're no longer a trailer park.
Now you are a you're zone for commercial.
So you can't do that. So I sat on the property for
several years after that doing exactly what I said I would
(06:14):
never do, waiting for the development to happen.
So that's what it was a it was alesson.
I don't know if I would have done things different if if, you
know, looking back over again, which it pays to reflect
sometimes, but I don't know if Iwould have done anything
different. It's just the way the economy
went, and I didn't see that coming.
Well, and it's, it's so true because if you had said to
(06:36):
someone in the middle of 2019 that their risk management plan
should include a global pandemicand the economy would be shut
down for two years, people wouldsay, what are you?
Not exactly. It's funny because during the
pandemic now, I was starting to do some things at the beach
because I was spending a lot of time at the beach anyway, and my
(06:57):
project was kind of stalled on the in the financing end on
Peterson Station. So I had enough to do some
things at the beach and I started doing more and more
there. Well, then the pandemic hits,
right? So when the pandemic hits, there
I was under construction for therestaurant, under construction
for renovating these apartments that I was also doing these
small, small units and we had just came to a grinding halt on
(07:22):
now. Now what do we do?
Right? So we continued on.
I was like, well, we're already pregnant.
We got it. We got to finish, you know, so
we so we did. But that's kind of when I really
got going on the short term rentals was during the pandemic,
right? You know, right before the
pandemic, but really got going during the pandemic.
And it was a a huge, huge win for us.
And there was very small projects, renovation projects is
(07:45):
was kind of what I became specialized in doing that with
my son doing a lot of renovations and every property
that we touched just turned to gold.
It's really kind of amazing the way that that has gone.
When I look at short term rentals, it's a little bit like
the gig economy because the barrier to entry for say,
(08:05):
another Uber driver to enter thefleet is very, very low.
And what that will eventually become as it becomes more and
more commoditized is the proverbial race to the bottom
where everyone is suffering A tolerable level of pain but no
one's making any money. Unless unless you have a
situation where the property is in a unique location, it is
(08:27):
scarce, it is zoned, and the demand supplied, imbalance is
going to persist for a good longtime, and it sounds like that's
what you focused on. You're exactly right.
They're not making any more beach.
There's there is some growth there.
There's a lot of growth and there's a lot of people coming
in, but there's only so much beach.
(08:48):
There's a, you know, it's a, it's a 30 mile beach and there's
two bridges to the island and that's it.
So, so even though you have moreand more coming, you'll never
meet up with that demand. I mean, we just book like crazy.
Even even when things slow down.And I heard of other short term
hosts, Airbnb hosts, they're suffering.
They're down 20 and 30%. I was like, I don't, I don't see
(09:10):
that here where we are, you know, in real estate, the adage
of, you know, location is everything is doubly true for
this, for this kind of property,because when you're looking at
short term rentals, I mean, you have to be extremely desirable,
you know, extremely desirable location and provide the
services too. So we have a, we have a great
team that that does that. I love it.
(09:30):
Yeah. That that is so key because one
of the problems, you know, I often tell people that brand is
important when I think about, let's say, imagine you were to
go build a hotel and there's in fact 2 hotels side by side on
the beach. They're both the same size.
They both charge the same nightly rate.
One of them's called the best Beach Hotel and the other one's
(09:53):
called Hilton. Which one of you pick?
Right, right. The best Beach Hotel might
indeed be the best Beach Hotel, but people don't want to do the
due diligence to they're lazy. They don't want to figure out
whether that's true. So the brand serves as a proxy
for that due diligence. And in the world of short term
rentals, there is almost no brand.
(10:13):
And that's part of the that's part of the weakness.
So if you're going to have a product of that sort, it really
has to stand out in some other means.
And that's one of the one of thebig challenges in the short term
rental business is it's almost devoid of brand because you've
basically given that brand over to VRBO or Airbnb.
You're you're exactly correct. You know that that touches on
(10:35):
something that that we have found.
Airbnb is the big £800 gorilla. I mean, they control everything.
And now you've got Verbo and there's home away and there's
several other ones, but they're very, you're very dependent on
them. So what we try to do and
realizing that we wanted to, youknow, identify ourselves, we
created our own company and we do a lot of direct bookings as
(10:57):
well called turtle shell properties, turtle shell
rentals. So we do that ourselves.
And the the idea, of course, is that we're not dependent on
Airbnb or VRBO if you know, theyare so heavy-handed in their
approach to the homeowners or you know, that the Airbnb hosts.
So you try to get people to cometo you on the second, third or
(11:20):
fourth booking. You don't go to your website.
And that way you're not in competition with 200 new Airbnb
hosts, you know, so, so we do try to create our own brand, to
your point. I love it.
Well, Jeff, if folks want to connect, if they want to learn
more, what's the best way? Well, any, any, you know, on the
(11:40):
website, of course we've got turtle shellrentals.com.
Maybe you'll have some show notes.
We can share those on there. Of course, my direct emails,
jmp521@aol.com. And that is, I know I'm one of
the last people on AOL. So it's not like you can't find
me, right? So it's, I still have that.
I did just finish a book. So I, I wrote this book and it
kind of covers my real estate and small business journey
(12:04):
through life, you know, but and that's called are we there yet?
And that's on Amazon. Any number of those places that
you can find me on those pretty easily.
Awesome. Well, Jeff, great to connect.
And for the listeners home, definitely connect with Jeff
Peterson. Links will be in the show notes
as well as a link to his new book.
Are We There Yet? And in the meantime, have an
awesome rest of your weekend, Gomake some great things happen,
(12:25):
and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!