The Augusta area's biggest real estate company just got bigger.
Meybohm Real Estate has acquired Justin Bolin's VanderMorgan Realty in a merger that Meybohm said Tuesday would more than double its market share above its closest competitor. Meybohm generates about $1.3 billion in sales annually.
"We couldn’t be more excited about welcoming Justin and the entire VanderMorgan team to Meybohm," Meybohm President John Cates said in a statement. "They are all incredible real estate professionals and bring many years of experience, entrepreneurship, hard work and community service to our company."
All of VanderMorgan's agents will become Meybohm agents, the companies
announced.
Bolin told The Augusta Chronicle on Tuesday that his new job title is associate broker and vice-president. He also will retain all rights to the VanderMorgan marque, to use professionally however he sees fit, though specific plans haven't been formed.
Bolin coined the VanderMorgan name by creating a portmanteau of two of American history's business giants, shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and corporate financier J.P. Morgan.
Both of the companies' owners have similar successful backstories.
E.G. Meybohm was a young coach at Harlem High School when he decided to dive into a completely new career as a sales associate for Southern Finance Corp. Realtors in 1970. By 1980, he had bought out his former bosses and changed the company's name to his.
Bolin had been a Burke County firefighter and EMT and had served a hitch in the U.S. Air Force when he pivoted from a possible medical career to try real estate, working with local Century 21 agents Jeff Keller and Larry Miller, who died in 2003. Bolin opened his own brokerage in 2008 at age 26.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Sold! Meybohm, VanderMorgan announce Augusta-area real estate merger
