1914 Oelwein Story-and-a-Half with Original Floors and Oversized Garage — $105,000

The hardwood floors are original. On a 110-year-old house, that either means someone took care of them or someone covered them up for decades and they survived anyway. Either way, they're there, on the main level, and they look the part.

This is a story-and-a-half in Oelwein, built in 1914, sitting at 979 square feet across two bedrooms and one bath. Small, but not cramped-small. The kind of small that's proportional to itself. The upper level got new flooring recently, so what you have is original wood downstairs and fresh material up, which is a reasonable combination.

The bigger news on a house this age is what's been done to the systems. Metal roof, new furnace and central air, new water heater. Those are the three things that will cost you on an old house if they haven't been addressed, and here they have been. You're not walking into deferred maintenance on the stuff that matters most.

The garage is worth mentioning separately because it's oversized and two-stall, which is a lot of space for a property at this price point. It sits at the back of the lot with access off the side street, so it's tucked away but functional. Workshop space, storage, two actual cars — you have options.

At $105,000, the math is straightforward. You're getting a house with original character, updated infrastructure, and more garage than you'd expect. The square footage is what it is. If you need a lot of room, this is not the right fit. If 979 square feet works for your life, then what you're paying for here is a structurally honest old house that someone has kept up rather than let slide.

The agent description calls it "priced to sell," which is a marketing phrase that means very little. The actual price relative to what's been put into the systems is what's worth paying attention to. That part holds up.