Typically investors who go into downtrodden neighborhoods with the intention of making a profit from the area’s affordable housing stock don’t have a good reputation, but then again, Larry Odom Bonds Jr. isn’t like most investors.
“Some of the other people who (own) rental properties, just buy them and they don’t care,” Bonds said. “They get by with the minimum, because they don’t live here and it doesn’t make any difference to them.”
But that’s not the case for Bonds, who actually lives in the heart of the Greenlaw neighborhood in Uptown Memphis.
“We bought our first piece of property in 2000, then I just started buying up everything around it,” Bonds, who is also lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, said. “My concept was to get it if it was touching it, so I could control what was around me.”
While the Greenlaw neighborhood still has a long way to go, the neighborhood was in far worse shape when Bonds first moved there. He said it was so bad that some of his properties still bear the faint scars of past drug deals gone wrong and gang-related firebombings from a time before he owned them.
So for the past two decades, Bonds has been quietly buying up properties in the area, fixing them up and either selling them or renting them out to his neighbors. He currently owns about a dozen properties, with plans in the pipeline to acquire several more.
Recently his business model has shifted some as the demand for fully-furnished Airbnb properties has increased. “My goal is to turn these houses into Airbnbs,” Bonds said. “I get to meet people from all over the world.”
Bonds and his family live in a small, two-story quadruplex apartment building that has been modified into a flat that would fit equally well in the South Main Arts District, while he uses the bottom two units as Airbnbs.
Renovating properties that have seen better days is nothing new to Bonds – the Army engineer has multiple tours of duty under his belt helping displaced locals rebuild. “I’ve been over in Afghanistan three times doing this,” Bonds said. “Last time I was over there I was helping the Afghans renovate some of their buildings.”
Now he puts that experience to work in the Greenlaw area, where he likes to use recycled materials from the neighborhood to retrofit and decorate his properties.
“I recycle everything,” he said. “When they remodel, they throw this stuff out on the street, so I’ll get it. I try to keep everything I can in the neighborhood.” In addition to readapting what he can, Bonds scours yard and estate sales to help stock some of his themed Airbnbs, which include a “cool ’60s pad,” a blues house, and of course, an Elvis-themed property. “So now instead of selling, I keep it because of what you can do with it,” Bonds said of the latter property. “When I bought this it was used as a rooming house. Now people from all over the world stay here.”
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