1908
Founded in 1908 in the new city of Birmingham, Alabama by James Hunter Berry, a native of Alabama. Success came early to Mr. Berry’s three-year-old real estate brokerage company, as it was awarded exclusive agency to market the new residential and commercial properties and lots in the newly founded city of Birmingham on Birmingham’s northern boundary which soon became the prime industrial area of metropolitan Birmingham.
1928
The company continued to flourish until Mr. James Berry died unexpectedly in 1928. His son, John Hunter Berry, came home from college at 20 years of age to lead the firm which then promptly became impacted by the Great Depression in 1929. The company, however, survived and other family members participated in ownership and management through the years.
1958
In 1958, Mr. John Berry’s son-in-law, Mr. Roy Bragg, was recruited from his coaching and teaching job in south Alabama to join the firm. The company was legally incorporated in the 1960s with two shareholders, both family members, and continued under family ownership until the 1980s when the current business ownership model was instituted.
1980s
The company’s primary focus was apartment management into the 1980s, but a significant change was made to the business when the firm acquired Molton Realty and Development Corporation in 1986, another prominent Birmingham real estate firm which was founded in 1886, with a heavy practice in commercial properties, particularly office and medical real estate.
2001
After over 20 years of leadership and involvement with the evolution of the company’s focus in commercial real estate, Carey Gilbert, II lead rebranding the company. At this point, J.H. Berry & Gilbert, Inc. made a continued and decisive shift of a primary focus in CRE. Carey recruited the current leadership and set the vision for perpetuation of the company for many years to come.
Today
Today, 115 years strong, JH Berry, is poised to continue well into the future under its current leadership of men and women with a primary focus in the business units of office and industrial leasing and brokerage and real estate investment.