Intentional Storyteller Doug Jones on Real Estate and “The Fantasies of Future Things"

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Cover Image: The Fantasies of Future Things by Doug Jones

Despite decades spent honing his skills in New York City’s cutthroat housing and economic development arena, then taking on Atlanta’s booming housing market, Doug Jones considers himself an accidental real estate agent. He considers himself a storyteller who happens to sell real estate. 

It’s no surprise given his background: Jones holds a master’s degree in creative writing, has contributed to Black literature anthologies and has a much-anticipated debut novel hitting bookstores in April. But storytelling, Jones says, is an important part of his day job, too.

“Writing is probably my great love, but real estate is a very, very close second,” says Jones.  “There are stories attached to these houses [and neighborhoods] that we live in.”

Jones’s twin passions intersect in “The Fantasies of Future Things,” a novel set in Atlanta as it prepares to host the 1996 Olympic Games. The story centers on two Black men, lovers working in real estate during a politically turbulent, highly-charged time in the ATL. As the city’s Black gay community emerges as a political and cultural force, the deadly AIDS crisis stalks within it. 

“They are working for this real estate development company that is actively working to transform the neighborhood,” Jones says. The two, he says, must decide “if they're down with essentially displacing [low-income] people” for gentrification, or if they will choose their power to stop it. 

It’s a world Jones knows first-hand. 

“Writing is probably my great love, but real estate is a very, very close second. There are stories attached to these houses [and neighborhoods] that we live in.”

— Doug Jones

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Jones entered the real estate game in 2007, just out of graduate school at Columbia University. In need of work (“Writing wasn’t exactly taking off,” he says), Jones leaned on prior experience connecting Bedford-Stuyvesant residents with community services and got a job as a project manager in the city’s economic development office, helping Brooklyn’s small businesses. 

“There are these parallel stories that happen,” Jones says. ”Along the way, you talk about a person's business, and then you talk about the idea for starting the business, and then the family that supports them for starting the business, and the background of that family, and then how it's going to affect their present and their future.”

Before long, “the president of the Brooklyn Chamber approached me about the job, and he said, you know, economic development. And all I heard was, math, right?” Jones says with a chuckle. “Well, that sounds interesting, but I'm not good at math. I don't know how useful I would be.”

Turns out he was very useful; before long, Jones began making a name for himself in the city’s dog-eat-dog real estate market. Then, the Morehouse College graduate decided to take his talents back to Atlanta, working in home sales and helping out in low-income communities. 

That means balancing the financial interests of his clients with community needs and keeping equity in mind when gentrification comes calling to Black neighborhoods — all while guiding property owners through the volatile real estate market.

Throughout his career, he continued to write poetry and essays, earning spots in literature journals and anthologies. He intends to keep working in real estate, level up his writing, and keep an eye out for stories to tell. s 

When he left graduate school, “I had written my great black gay American love story,” but it took 30 years to come to fruition, he says. “I am going to be morphing more and more into writing. But there will always, always be some aspect of real estate that's connected to my work.”