1938 Alturas Ranch House with Workshop on 0.40 Acres — $89,000

The wood-burning stove is the first thing you notice in the living room, and it makes sense with the rest of the room. Wood paneling on the walls, the kind that was put there when the house was built in 1938 and has stayed ever since. It gives the space a particular look, dark and warm, which you either respond to or you don't. If you do, it works well here.

The house is 1,232 square feet across three bedrooms and two baths. That's a workable size for a small family or anyone who wants a spare room without paying to heat a place twice as big as they need. The kitchen gets good natural light and has plenty of cabinet storage. No detail beyond that from the listing, but the basics are there.

What actually earns attention is the lot. At 0.40 acres in Alturas, you have real room around you. The large workshop out back is the kind of structure that justifies a property search on its own for certain buyers. Woodworker, mechanic, anyone who needs a dedicated space to work with their hands and wants it separate from the house. There's also a one-car attached carport and partial fencing.

Alturas is in Modoc County, rural northern California, and the price reflects that geography. $89,000 for a 1938 house with a workshop on nearly half an acre works out to about $72 per square foot. In California, that number stands out.

The house has age and the listing gives you only the broad strokes, so you'd want to look closely at the condition of the paneling, the stove, the roof, the plumbing. An 87-year-old house will have a history and you want to know what that history is before you buy it. But the structure exists, the workshop exists, the lot is real, and the price is low for the state. Those are the facts.