After his father passed away 12 years ago, Gene Jones often went to visit Oaklawn Cemetery.
Standing next to the grave, he would talk about how things were going. Sometimes a breeze would stir the leaves of the trees nearby in answer.
He recently learned his stepmother, Sandra, was having the same type of conversations with her deceased husband.
It’s how the two surviving owners of Dan Jones & Associates sensed that joining with Watson Realty Corp. would be pleasing to company’s late founder.
Dan Jones & Associates, one of Jacksonville’s oldest real estate companies, announced the merger in July. Watson, already the largest realty in Northeast Florida, stands to benefit from Dan Jones’ extensive property management division.
The companies are longtime competitors, but in life, Dan Jones and Bill Watson Jr. were friends. Watson said the work ethic and expertise of his friend’s firm would be “an enhancement to all.”
Dan and Sandra Jones opened Dan Jones & Associates in 1970 at 63rd and Main streets. It was a full-service realty that catered to a community of paper mills, port workers and Navy recruits from its office next to Joseph’s Pizzeria, a Northside tradition.
By the late 1970s, the realty had grown to five locations, the same as Watson, which launched in 1965.
“We were neck-and-neck with them at one time,” Gene Jones said with a smile.
Jones as a child wasn’t close to his father — his parents divorced when he was 5 and he lived with his mother. But he knew his father worked in real estate and he was able to glean some of his principles.
“We never had allowances as kids. If we wanted money for anything, we had to clean out rental houses,” Jones said.
It wasn’t until he began working at the business his father loved that Jones would come to know him better.
Dan Jones was doing well in real estate. Gene Jones was working at the Sears warehouse. The younger Jones realized he couldn’t rise any higher without becoming a manager — a job that involved more hours and, by his reckoning, less pay per hour in the long run.
He signed on at his father’s company.
Jones didn’t make any money his first six months and he feared he would starve to death.
He was 21, but with a full head of hair and a baby face, he looked even younger.
“When people first met me, they would say was, ‘How old are you and how long have you been doing this?’” Jones said.
His father suggested he grow a beard. And that he read every book, listen to every tape and attend every seminar on real estate he could find.
After a while, when customers had questions, Gene Jones knew the answers. They stopped asking him how long he’d be in real estate.
Building a business and relationships
Dan Jones & Associates for more than 40 years would be the Northside’s go-to real estate agency. Watson also kept an office there. During the real estate boom, several companies opened satellite offices, but none survived the bust.
As a businessman, Dan Jones was intelligent, hard-working and well-liked.
Active in the community, he chaired his church’s relocation building committee, served on the board of the Boy Scouts of America and founded its Mohawk District, which served underprivileged boys.
He led many business groups, including the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, where he was president in 2001.
He loved politics and helped advance the careers of several in office. Watson, who also enjoys politics, would form a tag team with Dan Jones when the two served on a screening committee for NEFAR’s candidate endorsements.
“He would tell my father, ‘You be the bad cop, I’ll be the good cop,’” Gene Jones said.
Dan Jones & Associates built its success on having a knowledgeable and professional staff. Because it was a mom-and-pop company, associates were treated like family.
On months when production numbers were good, everyone went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner on the company’s dime.
Dan Jones also believed in taking care of his customers and his son still hears many of those stories today.
Recently, a Walgreens pharmacist called a medical team for Gene Jones when his blood pressure read dangerously high. Jones learned that day his father had once rented a house to her when no one else would. She had just finished pharmacy school and was in debt.
Dan Jones had looked straight at her and said: Tell me you’re going to do what you say you’ll do and I’ll take a chance on you.
Now, 40 years later, it had made all the difference in the world to her.
Dan Jones had been bigger than life. But, Gene Jones found ways to step outside the large shadow he cast to define his own place in real estate.
In the 1990s, the father and son bought a rental property together, rehabbed it and sold it for a good profit. But it was Gene Jones, not his father, who enjoyed the work.
It led to a rehab company, which led to a property management division at Dan Jones & Associates that grew from 50 houses to nearly 800.
It was a good thing, too. During the real estate downturn, sales went to nearly zero. Property management kept the lights on.
“Without it, we would have gone out of business,” Gene Jones said, and then quietly, “I did that.”
Getting approval from his father
Gene Jones had a younger man’s take on the real estate business and a different style.
At one time, he replaced all of the cassette answering machines in the office with a modern system.
His dad in later years carried a cellphone, but he hardly ever used it.
Dan Jones was an old-school Realtor who never showed up at an appointment without a suit jacket and tie. Gene Jones learned sometimes a suit and tie could lose a customer.
Once he met a man at the zoo who was interested in buying land. The man and the friend who introduced them were both wearing blue jeans. Gene Jones was not.
“I don’t trust people who wear a suit and tie. You look like a salesman,” the man said.
“I took that jacket and tie off so fast,” said Gene Jones. “I rolled up my sleeves and said, ‘There. Now do you trust me?’”
Dan Jones was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1990s.
“They gave him six months. He beat that by 10 years,” Gene Jones said.
It was a time of great change for Jones. He tried to convince his father he didn’t have to do everything himself.
Always a bit averse to management, Jones became the company’s assistant manager.
Dan Jones died in February 2003. Since then, his son has carried his legacy.
Now 59 and recently married, Jones realizes there is only so much time left and some things he’d like to do — ministry work, perhaps flip houses again.
In Watson, Gene Jones & Associates pairs with a company that shares its values: Do what’s right. Give God credit for life’s blessings.
And make sure every deal is a win-win-win for all involved.
Dan Jones & Associates will keep its employees and very little will really change, Jones said.
“New name. Same people,” he said.
It’s bittersweet, he admits, the closing of a chapter.
But Sandra Jones had been saying lately she felt ready to move on. It was hard to do so when everywhere she looked, there were signs of Dan Jones.
She recently visited Oaklawn Cemetery. While there, she talked about the Watson merger she and her stepson had contemplated.
A breeze filled the branches of a crape myrtle nearby. There wasn’t a breath of wind anywhere else. Not in the trees, not in the grass.
“I think he was trying to tell us it was going to be all right,” Gene Jones said.
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