Character Home, Historic
1936 Paden City Four-Bedroom with Covered Second-Story Balcony — $145,900
6
out of 10
HousesUnder150K Score
Property Merit 50% · Condition 25% · Price/Sq Ft 15% · Market 10%
| Category | Wt. | Score | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Property Merit | 50% | 7 | 1936 4BR, 1800 sqft, covered second-story balcony, open layout, historic floor qualifier |
| Condition | 25% | 5 | No system dates, no renovation history, short description — condition unknown |
| Price / Sq Ft | 15% | 6 | Listing $81/sqft vs zip median $91/sqft — ~11% below; thin 7-comp dataset |
| Price vs. Market | 5% | 4 | $145,900 is ~9.7% above zip median $132,942 — just over the threshold |
| Market Conditions | 5% | 7 | Sale-to-list 90.8%, price drops 15.2%, DOM 42 days — clear buyer's market |
The balcony is the first thing worth paying attention to. A covered second-story balcony on a 1936 house is the kind of detail that takes some doing to find, and this one has it. Whether it overlooks anything worth looking at from up there, the listing does not say, but the structure exists, and on an almost-90-year-old house, that is a specific and appealing thing.
The house itself is 1,800 square feet with four bedrooms and a bath and a half. That is a real amount of space. Four bedrooms at this price point in a market where the sale-to-list ratio runs around 91 percent and 15 percent of listings have already taken price cuts means you have some room to work. The ask is $81 per square foot against a zip median closer to $91, so the per-square-foot number is competitive even if the overall price sits modestly above the area median.
The honest problem here is that the agent description tells you almost nothing about the condition of the house. No system ages, no renovation history, no mention of the roof or the furnace or the windows. A 1936 build that has been well maintained is a very different thing from one that has been left to drift, and this listing gives you no way to tell which one you are looking at. The condition score reflects that uncertainty, and it should weigh on how you approach a showing.
What the house gives you is the kind of layout you can move around in, four actual bedrooms for a family that needs them, and a piece of architecture from the mid-1930s that has its own weight and presence. Houses built then tend to have thick walls, solid woodwork, and proportions that later construction gave up on. Whether any of that has been preserved here, you would need to see for yourself.
In a buyer's market with 42 days average on market, patience works in your favor. Get an inspector in early and ask hard questions about what has been updated and when.
