Historic Kirkwood’s Architectural Gems Shine
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Nov 22, 2002
IN DEPTH: HOME QUARTERLY
Historic Kirkwood’s architectural gems shine
Tom Barry
In 1994, Benita Carswell took a drive that changed her life.
“I drove over to Kirkwood to give some folks a price on a deck,” said Carswell, who was a home renovator at the time. “I went down Winter Avenue and couldn’t believe it. The quality of the housing stock was just fantastic. Here were beautiful Craftsman-style homes from the 1920s and 1930s that were very much intact.”
The next day Carswell returned.”I drove every street in the area,” she said.
Undiscovered potential
Soon she bought her first home, a Craftsman bungalow, for $17,000, and later, a brick Tudor for $32,000.
“In those days, you could buy a lot of homes in that price range,” she said. “If I had had a banker willing to work with me, I could be retired today. I went into every bank in the city of Atlanta, and they literally laughed in my face. I’d lay out all this research and they’d say, ‘We’ll be happy to lend you money if you put a couple million dollars in our bank.’ ”
Who’s laughing now? The fateful drive was the genesis of Bo Bridgeport Brokers Inc. in Kirkwood. Co-owned by Carswell (the chief financial officer) and Janie Gray (the president), Bo Bridgeport has been one of the prime movers in the revitalization of the Kirkwood community in recent years.
“If Benita and her [earlier] partner hadn’t had the guts to do renovations in Kirkwood back in the mid-1990s, I don’t know if this neighborhood would have turned around,” said community activist Sharman Egan. “And later there were no real estate agents to sell the homes that were being renovated, so Benita switched gears and became an agent. She and Janie have had a huge impact on Kirkwood.”
Thirteen years ago, Gray had an experience similar to Carswell’s. She drove into Kirkwood “and couldn’t believe the architecture and the number of historic homes.”
Gray bought a 5,000-square-foot Country Victorian home for $90,000 that she and Carswell live in today. (The home’s most recent appraisal was for nearly $600,000.)
“Small two-bedroom, one-bath homes in Virginia-Highland were then selling for around $150,000,” she said.
Many Kirkwood homes have been sold through Bo Bridgeport, a full-service brokerage that lists and sells existing homes as well as works with builders in marketing new properties. Business has boomed so much that the number of agents has increased from 20 to 39 over the past year. (The company does not release sales volume.)
Many of Kirkwood’s new residents are young professionals who disliked the commute from suburbia (or suburbia itself) and sought a neighborhood with the look and feel of a village.
“People want to know their neighbors and have a cup of coffee with them at the local coffee shop,” Gray said. “They want to be able to walk to restaurants.”
Other dynamics are now in play as well.
“In the last six months, a lot of empty nesters who owned homes in Virginia-Highland and Druid Hills have cashed out and bought something a little smaller in Kirkwood,” Gray said. “Often they’re able to pay cash, even if the home costs $400,000.”
Homeowner power
The rush to Kirkwood is reflected in the size of the homeowners association. When Gray moved to the community, some 10 residents had just formed the Kirkwood Neighbors’ Organization. Today the group numbers around 500 members.
A one-time BellSouth Corp. employee, Carswell started Bo Bridgeport in 1997 at the behest of her neighbors, who had been lobbying her for some time.
“I don’t like Realtors,” Carswell said. “I told them, ‘If I’m going to get a real estate license, I might as well go down to Memorial Drive and open up a used car dealership.’ ”
A self-described risk-taker, Carswell finally decided to take the plunge, opening her own brokerage because she didn’t want to work for someone else. She launched it at her dining room table.
“The real estate commission faxed over exactly what I had to do to open up,” Carswell said. “One requirement was that you had to have a real estate license for three years before you could become a broker, so I went out and hired a broker.”
Needing more help, Carswell in turn begged Gray, a neighbor of hers who had an appraiser’s license and was then working for a corporation, to become her partner. In 1999, Gray signed on.
Both Carswell, 41, and Gray, 48, are personable and outgoing. Both handle many duties at the brokerage, which has a staff of five full-time employees and one part-timer in addition to the agents. Most of the marketing — Gray’s focus — is done via the Internet.
“We’re very heavily Internet-based, which makes us different from a lot of brokerages,” Carswell said. “Eighty-four percent of the people looking to buy a home today go online first, even before getting in their car to drive around or calling an agent.”
Bo Bridgeport recently entered the Jacksonville, Fla., market, is eyeing Orlando and is looking to expand its suburban business in Atlanta. Long range, Carswell and Gray want to export their model across the country.
One Bo Bridgeport agent, Kara O’Brien, has a thriving side business that is both springboarding on and fueling Kirkwood’s rise. O’Brien and her partner, Paula Rose, operate Kara O’ Brien Renovations LLC, which specializes in restoring historic homes. Typically the company buys a home, puts $60,000 to $150,000 of work into it — down to the original leaded-glass windows, roof, tiles and fixtures, scoured from across the country — then resells the property.
“Most of our homes sell within two weeks of being put on the market,” O’Brien said.
Since starting up three years ago, Laughing Sun has restored 12 houses, including the recent restoration of an 1897 home built by Coca-Cola magnate Asa Candler. Candler built four “spec” Victorian homes on Howard Street in Kirkwood, two of which remain. The restored Candler home recently sold for $428,000. Restored Craftsman bungalows sell for between “the high $200,000s and the low $300,000s,” O’Brien said.
She describes Carswell and Gray as “true visionaries who came into this community and saw the future at a time when the outlook was still glum.”
“Now the neighborhood has been transformed, and a lot of the credit should go to them,” O’Brien said. “They saw past all the problems.”
Both Carswell and Gray log 15-hour days, six and sometimes seven days a week. For them, it’s a labor of love.
“I enjoy the business of building a business,” Carswell said. “It’s very challenging.”
“Seeing historic homes come back to life and Kirkwood revitalized is very satisfying,” Gray said.
More changes are in the air, such as the $1 million streetscape improvement project targeted for the Kirkwood business district. “Our business district is so prime for redevelopment, it’s about to fall off the tree,” Carswell said.
Some people believe Bo Bridgeport is a real-life person, but the name actually derives from Carswell’s nickname (Bo) and the street where she bought her first investment property (Bridgeport).
But Bo has a tongue-in-cheek existence on the Internet. The brokerage’s Web site carries a bio detailing his singular abilities. “I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees. I write award-winning operas. I manage my time well … ,” the bio goes. “I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love and an outlaw in Peru.” In short, Bo knows.
Bo Bridgeport — the brokerage — generates cyberspace leads from all over. A recent inquiry came from a woman in Singapore who was moving to Atlanta to work for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Another was from Virginia. The prospective home buyer didn’t want to spend a dime more than $950,000.
“We said, ‘We may be able to help you,’ ” Carswell said.
© 2002 American City Business Journals Inc.
