Built from scratch. Run on principle.
We started this because the existing options weren’t working.
Northstar Homes was founded by Elliott Peterson on a simple observation: most homeowners who needed to sell quickly were getting hammered by an industry that wasn’t built for their situation.
The pitch from competitors was always the same — a junior acquisitions rep quoting an under-market offer over the phone, no walk-through, no comp sheet, take-it-or-leave-it. For a homeowner already navigating a difficult life event — divorce, probate, foreclosure, relocation — that approach added insult to injury.
Northstar was built around a different idea: that a fast, cash offer is a real product worth real money — and that the way to compete isn’t to lowball harder. It’s to be more transparent, more responsive, and more rooted in the community than the national franchises ever could be.
Today the company works in the two states Elliott has called home, South Florida and Minnesota, buying houses directly from owners, renovating most of them, and putting them back into the hands of families. Every offer we make is one we’d be comfortable defending in detail at a kitchen table.
“Tomorrow is unwritten, and that’s the most exciting thing about it.”
Our mission
Make selling a home in South Florida feel less like a gauntlet and more like a conversation between neighbors.
The four rules we don’t break.
Honest first, polished second.
If your house is worth more on the open market than we can pay, we'll say so. We'd rather lose the deal than sell you a number that doesn't make sense.
We show our math.
Every offer comes with the comp sheet we used to build it. You'll see the addresses, the conditions, the adjustments. No black box.
We work with people, not 'leads.'
Most sellers come to us because something hard is happening. We don't drip campaign you. We don't share your information. Our offer is good for seven days, with no countdown timers and no end-of-day pressure to decide.
We invest in the homes after.
We renovate everything we buy and put it back on the market — usually for a family. The properties we touch get better, and the neighborhoods we work in benefit.
One standard.Every transaction.
Founder of Northstar Homes
Elliott Peterson
Elliott was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. When he was still young, his father brought him and his brother to the United States to escape a dangerous situation back home, arriving with little more than a Swedish passport and the hope that things would be different here. After his father passed away, his cousin’s family took the boys in and raised them in Hermantown, a small town just outside Duluth, Minnesota. It was there that they became American citizens, and despite everything, Elliott still claims he had an amazing childhood.
After high school, he packed up and moved to Fort Lauderdale on a leap of faith. He’d never been to South Florida, didn’t know a single person there, and had no real plan beyond starting fresh. But he figured it out, building a life from the ground up for the second time and getting a front-row seat to how the real estate industry actually operates along the way.
A lot of what he saw wasn’t good. Too many companies hiding behind fine print, making lowball offers they knew weren’t fair, and taking advantage of people who were already going through the hardest moments of their lives. Homeowners dealing with probate, foreclosure, divorce, or relocation were being treated like transactions instead of people. Nobody was being straight with them, and most of the time, they didn’t even realize it until it was too late.
Elliott built Northstar Homes on the belief that this industry doesn’t have to work that way. The company was founded on three principles: be transparent, be trustworthy, and be direct. Every offer, every conversation, and every closing should be something both sides walk away from feeling good about.
Find out what yourFlorida home is actually worth.
One short form. One real number. No follow-up sales calls if you’d rather we didn’t. That’s the whole pitch.
Or just text us. We’ll respond inside of an hour during business hours, and first thing in the morning otherwise.