Thomas Taylor III and his wife, Rebecca, looked at 50 other cities to raise their children before landing on Columbus. The family chose Columbus for the same reason Taylor flips houses: he sees something others may not.

For Taylor, the pay-off lies well beyond the sale of a freshly flipped home.

“I like the difference I’m making in communities,” he told The Dispatch. “A lot of these homes we’re buying are vacant. They’re distressed. They’re uninhabitable. So to turn them … into a home where a family can enjoy it and it’s a high quality piece is fulfilling.”

Raised in Edmunds, Oklahoma, Taylor left his family home shortly after turning 16, a result of a deal he had with his parents that he could move out on his own if he scored high enough on his ACT. He can’t remember today if he scored 26 or 27, but it was enough.

After a brief stint in Los Angeles, which Taylor said was “a big culture shock for a country boy like me, but it was a good experience,” and a two-year mission trip in Bakersfield, California, Taylor made his way to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2017.

There, he met and fell in love, not only with Rebecca, but also with real estate.

His first job in the industry had him splitting his days between managing contractors on renovation projects and bidding at foreclosure auctions on behalf of a home-buying company.

“That was my first exposure to real estate, and I was hooked,” Taylor said. “… Every house is so different. Every experience is so different. Every situation is so real. With a house, there’s usually a family there too. There’s problem solving, and there are opportunities to help people find win-wins.

“I really like the impact on the community,” he added. “We were turning rough neighborhoods into beautiful homes.”

Taylor was eventually promoted to acquisition manager for the company, a position in which he helped establish teams expand into markets across Idaho, Georgia and the Carolinas.

“Over the course of … about 3 1/2, four years, I opened 25 markets for them, hired over 50 employees and built some systems, and it was a lot of fun,” he said. “We were flipping everything.”

Today, Taylor has helped flip more than 1,500 homes. But he’s far from finished.

The search for Columbus

While Taylor and his family enjoyed Salt Lake City, he and Rebecca knew they wanted to raise their kids – ages 5, 2 and 1 with another on the way – somewhere else.

“I don’t sleep as much as I used to,” he said with a laugh.

So, Taylor began searching for the family’s home, somewhere he could continue buying and flipping houses. The goal, he said, was to “find the next Huntsville, Alabama, before it became Huntsville, Alabama.”

“We looked at well over 50 different cities, and we analyzed the population, the location, the business development,” Taylor said. “We visited about half a dozen of them, and ultimately, Columbus was our No. 1 choice.”

The main driver in that decision, Taylor said, is the growth he expects Columbus, and the Golden Triangle region generally, will see over the next several years. Pointing to major developments like Aluminum Dynamics and Steel Dynamics, Taylor predicts home values could double in the region in the next decade.

“The Southeast is really starting to grow and develop, and I think sometimes it’s hard for people who have been here to see it, but a lot of growth has been coming to the Southeast,” he said. “We’re next on the pattern path of waves in terms of development, so we are trying to get ahead of the curve.”

So roughly 18 months ago, the family moved to Columbus, where Taylor and his employees have spent the last five months purchasing and flipping homes. The company, House Buyers, has purchased seven in the last month to flip, aiming to land 100 more across the region within the next year.

“To sit in peoples’ living rooms and find the win-win in the situation has been fulfilling, and then to work and network and find so many great people here has also been wonderful,” he said.

The work, he said, is about more than the price tag, focused on turning vacant or unlivable homes into ones families can cherish.

“I have met a lot of people in the community who see this and see the vision and see the growth,” he said. “And then on the flip side of the coin, I’ve seen people who haven’t, and I think the people who recognize that this place is going to grow and develop, we’re going to profit from it a lot over the next few years.”

That “outsider perspective” can be an asset for investors like Taylor, said Colin Krieger, local Realtor with RE/MAX and one of the connections Taylor has made since moving to town.

Krieger also noted Taylor’s intentional approach to keeping projects – and the dollars used to fund them – local.

“One thing that I think is overlooked when people are fixing up investment properties … at a fair price, they’re spending money with local contractors at local stores,” he said. “Thomas, I think, does an excellent job of that, with sourcing materials and trying to be as specific as he can of people spending their money at local stores.”

McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.