1914 Aberdeen Foursquare on Double Lot with Original Hardwoods — $120,000

The staircase is the first thing. Wooden, original, intact after more than a hundred years in a house that has clearly been through some things. That it survived says something about how this place was built.

The house is a 1914 foursquare in Aberdeen, Washington. Four bedrooms, one and a half baths, 1,840 square feet. The arched doorways are still there too, along with the hardwood floors, though those need work. At $65 a square foot, you are paying for the structure and the bones of the thing, not a finished product. The agent copy says "look beyond its current condition," which is a way of telling you the condition requires some looking beyond.

What you get when you do look past it: a double lot, which is real. More land than a standard single-lot purchase, room to do something with the yard or just have the space. The lot is level. The front porch is there, though I can't tell you what shape it is in from the listing.

Aberdeen is a small city on the Washington coast, and 1914 construction here means the house has been through a lot of Pacific Northwest weather over its lifetime. That context matters when you are thinking about what restoration means on a project like this. It will not be cheap and it will not be fast. The listing is honest enough to call it a restoration rather than dress it up as something easier.

But the staircase is intact. The arched doorways are intact. The hardwoods are there under whatever is covering them or has been done to them. Those things get ripped out of old houses all the time, by neglect or by renovation, and here they are still in place. For someone who wants a 110-year-old house and is willing to put real money and time into it, this is a more complete starting point than a lot of what is out there at this price.