After Richard Fertig’s 23-year marriage ended in 2016, the hedge fund manager needed a change of scenery from New York City. He’d heard about kiteboarding in North Carolina’s Outer Banks and visited Hatteras Island in Dare County. In 2018, he enrolled in REAL Watersports Zero to Hero Kite Camp, a three-day immersion experience, to learn kiteboarding.
“I had no intentions other than to learn how to kite, [but] fell in love with the area and saw massive opportunities,” Fertig says. He then owned a few short-term rental properties in other states and decided to expand in North Carolina.
Instead of buying houses, Fertig purchased 50 acres of Hatteras waterfront property and began building three single-family homes. Several miles away, he converted a former retail location into a lodge that Conde Nast Traveler magazine called one of the most exciting U.S. hotel openings of 2024.
The flagship home under Fertig’s Edgecamp brand boasts 14 bedrooms and 12,000 square feet. The property is zoned for another 45 homes, but Fertig is hesitant, even though he has permits ready for several other lots.
“We’re a little bit on hold primarily because interest rates are so high, construction costs are high and real estate values have flattened or started to decrease a little bit,” he says. “We’re going to be more conservative than aggressive. We view this as a very long-term opportunity. The only thing that I think could derail us is being a little too aggressive at the wrong time.”
In 2021, Fertig launched Stomp Capital, a private equity real estate fund that has invested more than $20 million. He’s the largest investor, along with some limited partners.
Fertig manages five other real estate projects with his second wife, Erika Bossi, from their homes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Sag Harbor, New York. The couple spent summers from 2018 to 2022 in Dare County, but moved once they could hand the project off to staff.
“This is not a reflection on our love of Hatteras Island or Dare County,” he says. “We can’t reside at any one of our properties because we’re a growing private equity firm, and we want to have half a dozen or a dozen locations. We visit them all, but we can’t live at each of them.”
Fertig had an unusual youth, with his family living three months of the year in New York City, then nine months in Costa Rica. His father had a successful mail-order catalogue business, but “prioritized quality of life over income,” Fertig wrote in a 2017 Forbes magazine story.
He majored in psychology and economics at Cornell University, then earned an MBA in finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998, he joined giant money manager Blackstone, where he focused on “absolute return” investing strategies.
“Back then, we said we wanted equity-like returns with bond-like volatility and never lose money,” Fertig says. “Those three principles have guided my investments for decades.”
In 2001 he moved to Ramius, helping founder Peter Cohen grow the business into one of the largest U.S. hedge funds. At its merger with Cowen Group in 2009, Ramius managed $7.7 billion, the New York Times reported. Amid the financial crisis that crippled many banks and investment firms, Fertig was let go, prompting him to start his own business.
GO BIG OR GO HOME
Edgecamp is about three and a half miles south of Rodanthe in Dare County, which has roughly 20,000 short-term rentals, mostly individually owned, and 57 hotels and motels. The county attracts 3.5 million annual visitors, with the three summer months accounting for about 65% of lodging revenue.
“When we looked at the 3,000 single-family homes for rent on Hatteras Island, the
vast majority are four to seven bedrooms,” Fertig explains. He had a vision for
something different.
“We recognized there are a lot of larger families, extended families, corporate off-sites
and small weddings, and people were renting multiple homes in order to accommodate their groups. We thought we could build one larger home and do all that. It’s been
wildly successful.”
Edgecamp properties generally sell out during peak season, with the homes renting from $1,000 to $3,000 per night. Most guests come from the Carolinas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. while some fly from California, Florida and New York.
While at the Outer Banks, Fertig often passed by a two-story retail shopping center for sale in Rodanthe. The price caught Fertig’s attention when the price was marked down to less than both the assessed land value and the replacement cost.
“We said, ‘Gee, everyone is looking at this as a retail center, that’s not the best use of this location,’” Fertig says. “What this island really needs is a hotel.”
Fertig converted the building into Edgecamp Pamlico Station, a two-story hotel. The
14 luxury suites highlight the style of New York designer Jonathan Adler. Rooms range
from $250 to $600 a night.
“It’s a fundamental shift in how we view risk and return,” Fertig says. “We like to do things that we believe are needed and are missing, and no other entrepreneur has had the idea, the vision or the wherewithal to actually do it.”
During due diligence, Fertig found a Dare County law calling for 24/7 staffing at hotels but permitting guests to check themselves in at single-family homes. This posed a problem because Pamlico Station’s business model included self-check-in. Fertig was successful in lobbying Dare County to update the law to include hotels and motels.
“We changed the zoning,” he says. “We changed the law and then we gut- renovated the entire thing. We took it down to the studs and the pilings so there was nothing else. We built, from scratch, a boutique hotel.”
As Fertig continues to build the Edgecamp brand, the properties will offer a sense of place with a focus on unique architecture and design.
“We believe that travel and immersive experiences are the future of travel and so we don’t have to be right for everybody,” he says. “We are really niching down to who our target audience is. They tend to be affluent, love the outdoors and want to feel connected to the location.”
Some of them may even learn kiteboarding. ■
