Find homes for sale by owner in Akron, Ohio
Search Akron real estate listings in Ohio to find for sale by owner homes in the Summit County metro area. Access the largest selection of fsbo homes in your local area.
Sell home by owner in Akron, Ohio
Sell a home by owner in Akron and save thousands in commission. Ohio houses for sale by owner in Summit County sell faster with our preferred real estate listing services.
Akron, Ohio For Sale By Owner - Local Information
Akron is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. In 2007, its population was estimated to be 207,934. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the Cuyahoga River between Cleveland to the north and Canton to the south, approximately 60 miles (96 km) west of the Pennsylvania border.
Akron is the principal city of the Akron Metropolitan Statistical Area, a metropolitan area that covers Portage and Summit counties and had a combined population of 694,960 at the 2000 census.
Akron was founded in 1825 near the Ohio and Erie Canal, and became a manufacturing center owing to its location at a staircase of locks. The locks were needed due to the higher elevation of the area, which gave rise to the name Summit County as well as Akron, which is a rough translation of summit into Greek (Stewart, pg. 233). Akros, part of the original Greek word akrópolis, means highest. In the early 20th century, Akron was coined a boom town. After the decline of heavy manufacturing in the 1970s and '80s, the city's industry has since diversified into research, financial, and high tech sectors.
Akron and nearby Canton are often referred to as a single region or considered twin cities. The Akron-Canton Regional Airport is one of many places near the city that is named for both places. While the U.S. Census Bureau still counts the two metropolitan areas separately, if combined, the total population of the Akron-Canton area would equal 1,101,894 people. In 1985 the Akron Fulton International Airport was recognized as the 3rd National Landmark of Soaring by the National Soaring Museum.
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron in 1935. The city is home to The University of Akron, the Akron Aeros Double A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, the Soap Box Derby World Championships and the Firestone Country Club, at which the PGA Tour's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational is played. The word "devilstrip" is also thought to be unique to, and have its origin in, Akron: it refers to the strip of grass between a sidewalk and the street.
Akron won the All-American City award three times making it into the National Civic League Hall of Fame. The National Arbor Day Foundation has designated Akron as a Tree City USA.
Residents of Akron are usually referred to as "Akronites". Nicknames used for the city include "Rubber Capital of the World," "Rubber City," "City of Invention," "Summit City," and "Tire City."
Map of Akron, Ohio FSBO Listings
Additional information about Akron, Ohio
Much of Akron's early growth was because of its location at the summit of the Ohio and Erie Canal (thus the name Summit County) which at one time connected Lake Erie and the Ohio River.
Akron was established in December 1825 by Simon Perkins as a small village on the divide between the St. Lawrence River and the Mississippi River drainage basins. The village was a 43-block square with its main intersection at Exchange and Main Streets; its northern limit was one block beyond State Street. The village was originally built mainly to serve people using the Ohio and Erie Canal as Akron was located in an area with a series of canal locks as the canal ascended from Cleveland to the Portage summit. In 1833, Eliakim Crosby established a "second" Akron just north of the existing village known as Cascade, which would also be referred to locally as "north Akron." Cascade developed around a construction project originally intended to provide increased water power for industries. In 1836 the villages joined under the Akron name. The completion of the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal along Main Street in 1839 started Akron on its climb to industrial importance. In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered her Ain't I A Woman? speech at the Women's Convention. Coal, a major railroad, and manufacturing growth from the Civil War contributed to a population increase from 3,500 to 10,000 inhabitants between 1860 and 1870.
Because of physical obstacles — the steep hill on West Market Street, the Little Cuyahoga Valley, and the swamp south of the city — Akron grew to the east. This encouraged the annexation of Spicertown, centered on Spicer and Exchange, and then Middlebury, which was centered where the Arlington and Market Street commercial area is now located.
Akron’s history and the history of the rubber industry are intertwined. The rubber industry transformed Akron from a small canal town into a fledgling city. The birth of the rubber industry started in the 1800s. In 1869, B.F. Goodrich started the first rubber company in Akron. In 1898, Frank A. Seiberling founded the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. In 1900, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was established in Akron, the same year the city experienced it's worst riot in history resulting in the destruction of both the Columbia and City building.
. In 1915, Akron's area increased from to . The population rose about 300 percent during this time, from 69,067 in 1910 to 208,435 in 1920. General Tire was founded in 1915 by the O'Neils, whose department store named O'Neil's, became an Akron landmark. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company became America's top tire manufacturer and Akron was granted the moniker of "The Rubber Capital of the World".
The rubber industry shaped not just the industrial, but also the residential landscape in Akron. Rubber companies responded to housing crunches caused by the booming rubber business by building affordable housing for workers. Goodyear's president, F.A. Seiberling, built homes costing around $3,500 for employees in what would become known as Goodyear Heights. Likewise, Harvey Firestone built employee homes in what would be called Firestone Park. During this period, O.C. Barber, ''America's Match King, founded the Diamond Match Company through a merger with the Barber Match Company and others.
For a time it was the fastest-growing city in the country, its population exploding from 69,000 in 1910 to 208,000 in 1920. People came for the jobs in the rubber factories from many places, including Europe. Of those 208,000, almost one-third were immigrants and their children. Among the factory workers in the early 1920s was a young Clark Gable.
In the 1950s and '60s Akron saw a surge in industry as use of the automobile took off. In July 1968, several riots occurred over the span of six days centered in the city's mostly Black populated Wooster Ave./Edgewood Ave. area. In the 1970s and '80s, the rubber industry experienced a major decline as a number of strikes and factory shutdowns delivered the final blows to the industry. Between 2000 and 2007, the number of Akron workers in plastics and rubber products manufacturing was slashed in half. By the early '90s Goodyear was the only remaining rubber manufacturer based in Akron.
Beginning in the early 1910s, Goodyear began experimenting with airship development, and in 1917 created a subsidiary with the Zeppelin Company to build dirigibles in the United States. During the 1920s and 1930s, Akron and Lakehurst, New Jersey, were the American centers of dirigible research and manufacturing. The United States' largest airships, Akron, and Macon, were both built in Akron. After their tragic accidents in 1933 and 1935, and the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, rigid airships were abandoned and Goodyear focused on the production of blimps. The US Navy used many blimps in World War II such as The GZ-22 class, Spirit of Akron (N4A), for aerial observation. In the 1960s Goodyear famously began using them for advertising, with the invention of the Skytacular which debut on the Mayflower, at the Indy 500 in 1966. Though very few new airships are built today, the Goodyear Blimps remain a popular corporate symbol. The Goodyear Airdock, now owned by Lockheed Martin, is, along with several other airship hangars, one of the largest buildings in the world without interior supports. From 1955 to 1962, Goodyear also manufactured twelve Inflatoplanes, which were designed for rescue missions during war and came in two versions: the single-seat GA-468 and the two-seat GA-466. The craft was sponsored by the United States Army, which cancelled the project because the craft was too easy to shoot down. The B. F. Goodrich Company also manufactured the first space suits, which were used in NASA's Project Mercury.
The first police car was a wagon that run via electricity fielded on the streets of Akron in 1899. Akron was one of the first mafia cities in the Midwest during the 20th century. The Black Hand lead by the Don Rosario Borgio, who arrived in Akron in the early 1900s, was headquartered on the city's north side. Using a general goods store as a front, Borgio set up two back rooms for illegal operations. All of gambling and brothels in the city were extorted along with wealthy and Italian North Hill neighborhood citizens. In 1918 the Akron Police Department started aggressively raiding Borgio's gambling and prostitution houses, locking up the operators and patrons. Due to the interference, Borgio held a meeting in his store with Black Hand leaders, giving the order to slay every cop in the city, placing a $250 reward on each one killed. The order led to the murders of Officers Robert Norris, Edward Costigan, Joe Hunt, and Gethin Richards. Aftering the execution of Borgio by electric chair following the case filed against him by New York Detective Fiaschetti over the slayings, mafia activity in Akron greatly decreased. As in most cities, by the 21th century, mob activity had vanished.
In Summit County, the Ku Klux Klan reported having 50,000, making it the largest local chapter in the United States. Members included many county officials, the sheriff, mayor of Akron, judges, county commissioners, and most members of Akron's school board. The ladies' auxiliary of the Akron chapter submitted a float for city's centennial parade in 1925. In 1925, a committee of one hundred was formed to recruit and promote non-Klan candidates to run in the November election, Wendell Willkie was a spokesman for the group. 3 of the group’s 4 candidates won in the election which started the beginning of the end of the Klan’s influence in Akron politics.
Popular FSBO cities in Ohio
