This is a series about neighbors helping each other in Wayne & Medina counties, produced in partnership with Community Action of Wayne and Medina.
By day, you can find Zaurice Stephens working as a realtor. He sells homes throughout Northeast Ohio and educates his clientele on financial literacy through social media.
However, Stephens lives a sort of double life. At night and on the weekends, he's a DJ, spinning tracks at clubs around his hometown of Wooster.
Learning about music and real estate
Stephens’ love for music began at a youth center in Wooster. He was a child of divorce, growing up in a rough neighborhood. While hanging out by the computers at his local youth center, he discovered music-making software and excelled at making beats — people would even give him their iPods to load his beats onto them.
“By the time I was 13, I was actually posting beats on SoundClick,” Stephens said. “And then people in school would tell me about it. I'm like, ‘I had no idea they were listening to it.’”
Throughout his teenage years, he never had job except for music. He produced beats for record artists independently before working for various studios across Northeast Ohio until he saved enough to build his own studio. However, his love for producing beats became a greater appreciation for music.
Around his early 20s, Stephens' uncle opened a club in Wooster, and Stephens started DJing and promoting parties there. That’s where he learned how to put events together.
Around 2019, Stephens started to become interested in real estate. After a conversation with a friend, he started studying to become a realtor.
“No one in our family really ever owned a house,” Stephens said. “I always looked at, what does every millionaire own? And there's something in common. It's real estate.”
In early 2020, he passed his exams and entered one of the hottest housing markets in recent memory. He also began teaching others about financial literacy and homeownership through social media. Stephens said that even some seasoned realtors hadn’t seen a market like 2020. The increased demand had forced him to become aggressive to win bids and sell homes.
“It was rough, but also it was a way to kind of get into it,” Stephens said. “You don't really have time to just lollygag. You got to figure this out now because things are moving, interest rates are low. People want to buy homes now.”
Between the pandemic boom in housing demand and a strong manufacturing job base, Wooster is becoming a hotbed for new housing in Northeast Ohio. Wayne County will need to provide more than 2,400 new homes in the next five years to keep up with demand, according to a 2024 analysis by the Wayne Economic Development Council. Wooster’s housing market remains very competitive, as homes there spend less than a month on the market — less than the national average.
Stephens has also found ways to mix his love for music with his job as a realtor. He makes the music for all his social media videos and is even working on a real estate-themed hip-hop album with a friend.... tongue planted firmly in cheek. One of the singles is called Sold A House Today.
Bringing the community together
While 2020 brought new opportunities for Stephens, the world was in chaos. The coronavirus pandemic resulted in lockdowns, forcing folks into isolation. Later that year, police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparking major protests in cities across the globe. Millions of Americans were divided. Stephens said he saw those very same national divisions playing out online in Wooster.
“You would go on Facebook and there was a lot of divide,” Stephens said. “Both sides were very hard on each other. And I think that it was just a moment where I was like, ‘What brings people together?’ What brings a family together is usually a cookout.”
So Stephens threw a community cookout for Juneteenth and it was a hit. He worked with vendors to provide food while he provided music and a setting. He said almost 300 people showed up to the cookout, proving to him that the community needs these events.
As a result, he began planning more events for Wooster. For the last five years, Stephens has been working to soothe the divisions in his community through local events. Last year alone, he hosted 18 different events for the community.
During one of his most recent events, he and a group of volunteers helped plant trees in the neighborhood he grew up in, adding to the region’s tree canopy.
“People want different things to do around here," Stephens said. “It's a smaller area. There's not as much to do around here, so it's just a way for me to connect with people and also just have fun with everybody.”
Ultimately, the goal for Stephens is to bring the community together and give back to the city where he learned so much.
“I live in the community, I work in the community, but I don't want to just make money off the community,” Stephens said. “I want to give back to the community because nothing that I do works without the community. ”
In the future, Stephens hopes to improve these events with better production, better planning and more sponsorships. But the heart of the events remains the same — mending divisions and keeping the community together. He’s coming full circle by giving back to his community through both music and real estate.
