Realtor Don Oxley is most recognizable for his mullet haircut, engaging smile and gentle Southern accent.
But he is best known by the people he touches for his kind heart.
The 2016 Top Producer at Watson Realty’s Dunn Avenue office finds the rebellious image he projects allows him to become close to people who need help.
“I love people, and I Iove to help people through difficult things,” he said.
Oxley, who is nearly 61 years old, will soon be a grandfather for the 10th time. He still lives in his “starter home” with his wife, Cindy, whom he met while in his senior year at Edward H. White High School. The Jacksonville-based Southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, played at their senior prom.
While Oxley sells real estate across the Jacksonville area, he considers the Northside his home. “I tell everybody I’m bilingual: I speak English and redneck,” he quips. “These are my people.”
And his people are on the move. Oxley is witnessing rapid growth in two Northside neighborhoods: Springfield, which appeals to millennials, and the Brentwood area just north of Springfield.
Yet most of his sales are in Yulee, Hilliard and Callahan, where customers are buying homes to escape Jacksonville’s noise and traffic congestion.
Oxley entered the real estate business more than three years ago after retiring from the U.S. Postal Service. He delivered mail for 29 years in the North Jacksonville and Arlington areas.
“It was a fun ride,” Oxley said, adding that the best part of his previous career was getting to know the people on his route.
“I watched their kids grow up and went to their graduations and weddings,” he said.
Sometimes Oxley, who considers himself a rebel of sorts, was at odds with the agency’s management and the National Association of Letter Carriers union, neither of which he was a member.
Most difficult for him were the rules that prohibited him from spending time with customers.
He learned to keep things to himself, such as helping an elderly man on his mail route who couldn’t cook for himself. Oxley routinely skipped his lunch break to make soup and a sandwich for the man.
“I grew up a rebel,” he said. “Always have been. I do things against the grain.”
When he talks about business, Oxley naturally slips into mentioning his other passion: Sharing his Christian faith through work, surfing, Little League baseball and his Sunday-school class.
That class attracts about 60 people ranging from attorneys to the homeless.
His ministry extends beyond church walls. Oxley calls himself a “jetty rat” because, after many decades, he still surfs at the North Jetty at Huguenot Memorial Park.
In 2002, he was one of the founders of the Christian Surfers’ Jacksonville chapter. He remains active with the group, which is hosting a summer surf camp for kids.
Surfing appeals to him, Oxley said, because it embraces a lifestyle of rebelliousness, camaraderie and an appreciation of nature.
In his youth, that lifestyle translated into drugs and rock ’n’ roll, which did not help Oxley face his deep-rooted insecurities.
That didn’t come until a few years later, when he experienced a spiritual awakening, coming to know God and himself.
Now, surfing provides him an opportunity to build friendships with youth who are struggling with the same issues.
“The Lord has blessed me,” Oxley said.
The network of friends he’s built over a lifetime — surfers, church members, kids he coached and his mail customers — are now calling him to help them buy or sell a home. He’s built a list of 400 contacts in less than four years, Oxley said.
“All these relationships are now coming back to me in real estate,” he said.
Those connections don’t always mean immediate sales, but the value of relationship-building often pays off in surprising ways.
Oxley said he cost himself three real estate transactions when a divorcing couple hired him to sell their house and buy two new, separate homes. He encouraged the couple to stay together, and they took his advice.
“Character means more to me than my wallet,” Oxley said, noting the couple remains married and the husband, who has become a property investor, has since bought several homes through him.
“You have to treat people right and be who you are,” he said. “People are looking for somebody they can trust.”