Hidden Gem, Pool
1968 Hawaii Fixer with Pool, 2511 Sqft, and Ocean View — $135,000
6
out of 10
HousesUnder150K Score
Property Merit 50% · Condition 25% · Price/Sq Ft 15% · Market 10%
| Category | Wt. | Score | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Property Merit | 50% | 8 | Pool, 2511 sqft, ocean view, 3/3, Hawaii location — multiple floor qualifiers stack |
| Condition | 25% | 4 | "Fixer upper, needs TLC, bring your vision" — investor language, no system dates, permit questions |
| Price / Sq Ft | 15% | 9 | Listing $54/sqft vs zip median ~$300/sqft; 82% below — extraordinary but only 3 comps |
| Price vs. Market | 5% | 9 | $135K vs $284K median — 52% below; thin market, 1 sale last month |
| Market Conditions | 5% | 5 | 50% price drops positive signal; sale-to-list 99%, DOM 83 vs median 43 — neutral floor |
Fifty-four dollars a square foot in Hawaii. That number is the whole story, at least the first chapter. The median price per square foot in this zip code runs around $300. This house is $135,000. You do the math and then you do it again because it seems wrong.
The house is a 1968 single-family in Pahala Village on the Big Island, 2,511 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, an in-ground pool, and an ocean view on clear days from the front of the home. The lot is 11,125 square feet. That is a real-sized house on a real-sized lot with a pool, in Hawaii, for less than a new pickup truck.
Now the other part. The listing says "fixer upper, needs TLC, bring your vision," which is agent shorthand for: budget for work before you can live in it. There are no system dates anywhere in the listing data, so you have no idea what state the roof, the plumbing, or the electrical is in. The county records currently show two bedrooms and two bathrooms, not three and three, because additions were made over the years. The seller has original house plans and permits on file, and the county assessor visited the property in June 2026 to document the actual configuration, but the updated records will not reflect until 2027. The Department of Health shows no cesspool record. These are not small administrative footnotes. They are the kind of things that slow a standard loan or complicate a title. This is a cash-and-patience situation.
If you have both of those things, the math here is hard to find elsewhere. You are looking at a two-story layout with a family room and a patio addition, a pool in the backyard, a hospital and a school within walking distance, and a price that sits 52% below the zip median sale price. Pahala is a small town on the southern end of the island, not a tourist corridor, which is partly why this price exists. The house needs work. Nobody is hiding that. But 2,500 square feet with a pool in Hawaii for $135,000 leaves a lot of room to spend on that work and still come out somewhere most buyers in this market cannot get to.
