Candice Eberhardt of Akron is first Black woman to lead Northeast Ohio Realtors group

Candice Eberhardt is spending 2022 celebrating 10 years since she founded her real estate business in Akron.

This year, she also is advocating for her profession as the 2022 president of the Akron Cleveland Association of Realtors, also known as ACAR, the governing body for about 7,000 real estate agents in the Greater Akron area. She is the first Black woman to be the organization's president in its more than 100 years of existence; she was sworn in a little over a month ago.

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It's all part of a journey the 42-year-old Akron native who grew up in Goodyear Heights has been on personally and professionally for more than 20 years, when she first started in the real estate business that evolved into Eberhardt Realty & Management, headquartered in Akron's Wallhaven neighborhood.

Becoming president of the Northeast Ohio real estate organization, which represents Realtors in Summit, Portage and Cuyahoga counties, was something she thought about a long time ago, Eberhardt said.

"It means a lot," she said. "When I started in the business years ago, it was actually a goal I had set."

Still, over the course of her life "and things happening," working to become head of her local Realtors group was temporarily set aside until fairly recently, she said.

Realtor leadership journey begins

Eberhardt's involvement in real estate started when she was 20 and a third shift dispatcher for local trucking companies, working midnight to 8 a.m. for years. Being a dispatcher gave her a steady paycheck as well as benefits, she said.

"I built my business during the day," she said. "It was supposed to be part time."

But her real estate business began growing and taking up more of her time, she said.

"In 2016, I started my leadership journey," Eberhardt said. "It was a progression to get there."

That leadership journey led to becoming involved in organizations and causes she believed in. It was at times a struggle because she was working to build her business at the same time. And late in the journey, she was hit with a serious personal setback.

"(Early on) I had to say no to a lot of things I wanted to be part of," Eberhardt said. "When I opened my company and the agents came, that gave me the leverage I needed to become more involved in the community. I sit on several boards, graduated from Leadership Akron in 2018, and started my journey with ACAR in 2016."

People in the Realtors group tapped her for the organization's Tomorrow's Leader Today award, meaning they recognized her potential and ability to progress in the organization. She then went from being a board member to treasurer to president-elect in 2021 and then to her current job as president.

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As ACAR president, Eberhardt says she spends a lot of time addressing issues important to the real estate industry. She has started speaking before other local community organizations.

"We're here to support anything related to real estate," she said.

She chose "Moving Forward Together" as her theme during her term as president with the Akron Cleveland Realtors. She likens the group to a second family for her.

Illness a temporary setback

While she is determined to move forward, she had a personal issue that temporarily held her back: an unexpected diagnosis of a brain tumor in March 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading in the United States.

The tumor was discovered after she went to a doctor about one of her eyes that was constantly watering.

Eberhardt underwent successful surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, with one surgeon removing the tumor from her brain and another surgeon removing a part of the tumor that had wrapped around her eye. One of her surgeons is originally from Akron, she said.

With COVID restrictions in place, Eberhardt said she was limited to one visitor at a time. Her parents were with her, as was a man she had started dating just three weeks before the diagnosis, she said.

"It was rough," Eberhardt recalled. She had 43 staples in her head and was in the hospital for five days, then remained in Baltimore for another two weeks until getting cleared to return home to Akron and finish healing.

"I was off work for four months, from July to November," Eberhardt said. "2020 was a strange year. It really was."

And as for her then-new boyfriend, they remain together, she said.

"He came and helped my parents nurse me back to health," she said. "He's a good guy. ... I was not expecting him to stay around because that's a lot for anybody. But he was there."

Her ACAR colleagues also sent food and other support, she said.

Being unable to work for months taught her to delegate, Eberhardt said.

"I ran myself into the ground over the last 20 years," she said.

Office manager Capri Daniels ran the company and its 13 agents in her absence, she said.

"I didn't have to worry about anything," Eberhardt said. "She did everything. ... She's amazing."

Family, mentoring aided Eberhardt

Real estate is part of her family history, she said. Her grandfather John Eberhardt had Eberhardt Realty in the 1970s, and other relatives also were in real estate.

She credits the late Russel Neal, a broker with an Akron real estate firm, with mentoring her.

"I believe a lot of the reasons I'm successful is the tutelage I had under him. He was just an amazing person. He was well-loved, well-respected by everybody. Everybody trusted him. And if they trust you, they'll do business with you. So I just try to carry that portion of him with me," Eberhardt said. "He passed away unexpectedly in 2011, which left a huge hole in the community. It did."

She started her business on Halloween in 2012, opening her first office in Cuyahoga Falls, then months later relocated to the Wallhaven Building at West Market and Exchange streets in Akron.

"I was a one-person operation," she said. "I've been here ever since."

Eberhardt specializes in residential real estate and has a diverse clientele who range from established and wealthy to first-time buyers. Most of her sales are in the Akron area. She has a business plan in place and is currently looking into succession planning.

Rewarded by first-time homebuyers

One of the best things about her business is being able to help people buy a home who never thought that was possible, Eberhardt said.

"I meet people all the time who never thought they could buy a house, because they haven't been educated on the process and they think it's so hard to obtain," she said.

For years, she has directed people to take part in a program for first-time homebuyers through the East Akron Neighborhood Development Corp.

"I've sent hundreds of clients there," she said. "They have a program that prepares them for home ownership. ... It doesn't matter who they are. ... It's very rewarding. It's gone even better than I thought it ever would."

Beacon Journal reporter Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him @JimMackinnonABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/JimMackinnonABJ.

About the series

The Beacon Journal is profiling Black-owned businesses in Summit County. Read more of these profiles at https://bit.ly/3jb0h1e. The Beacon Journal will continue to highlight minority-owned businesses as part of its ongoing regular coverage

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Candice Eberhardt first Black woman president of NE Ohio Realtor group