Bradford, PA 16701 Real Estate: Prices, Trends, and Investor Numbers Portals Skip

Why the median price you see depends on where you look

A market this small breaks the assumptions built into most price tools. Bradford city sold at a median of $92,445 in May 2026, and at $85,000 the month before that, a 9% swing driven by which handful of homes happened to close, not by a change in underlying value (Redfin city data; Redfin housing-market page). The ZIP code, which includes some parcels outside the city boundary, priced at $119,950 in March. Movoto’s independently sourced feed put the January list-price median at $131,000. Fish Real Estate’s brokerage figure landed at $86,000. These tools don’t disagree about the market; they disagree about the boundary and the month, and Bradford sells too few homes for one month’s data to settle either question.

Treat any single figure as a snapshot, not a fact: the working range for a typical 16701 sale in early-to-mid 2026 is roughly $85,000 to $131,000, narrowing toward $92,000 to $120,000 when weighting the two most recent, most geographically precise readings.

Why do different real estate sites show different median prices for 16701? They measure different boundaries (ZIP versus city) and different months, and Bradford sells few enough homes per month that a handful of high- or low-priced closings can move the median 10% or more.

Is 16701 a buyer’s or seller’s market right now

Neither side has firm control. Homes sit 79 to 88 days before selling, roughly twice the pace of a competitive market, and closings run about 95% of list price (Redfin), which signals sellers aren’t giving away much once a serious buyer shows up. Read it as a patient market for buyers on speed, and a fair-price market for sellers on discount.

For investors: rental yield and price-to-rent in 16701

No competitor page publishes a rent figure for this ZIP, which makes any investor math impossible on their pages. McKean County’s HUD Fair Market Rents run $708 to $1,447 across bedroom sizes, and the two-bedroom Section 8 payment standard sits at $761 to $930 (AffordableHousingOnline, drawing on HUD data). No source breaks Bradford rents out by property type, so the table below pairs actual listing prices observed in 16701 with the county rent ceiling for that unit’s likely bedroom count, an estimate built from two separate sources, not a single reported per-type figure.

Gross yield compresses fast as price rises past roughly $170,000; the sub-$100,000 tier is where a low purchase price and the county’s rent ceiling combine into double-digit gross returns, before accounting for the condition risk covered further down this page.

What’s a realistic rental return on a Bradford investment property? Gross yields above 10% appear achievable only on properties priced under roughly $170,000, based on McKean County’s published Fair Market Rent ceilings; above that price tier, yields fall toward 5%, closer to a typical stabilized market.

Population and the local economy: what’s driving demand

Census Reporter’s most recent five-year estimate puts the population at 7,683, with a median household income of $56,161 (Census Reporter, ACS data). A separate population model estimates 7,361 for 2026 and puts the decline at about 1.1% a year, down 5.99% since the 2020 Census count of 7,830 (World Population Review). The two estimates use different methods and land within about 4% of each other, both pointing the same direction: gradual, steady contraction, not a cliff.

Employment tells a sharper story. Jobs held by Bradford residents fell from 3.49 thousand to 3.38 thousand between 2023 and 2024, a 3.1% one-year drop, with health care and social assistance (848 workers), retail trade (593), and manufacturing (530) as the largest sectors (Data USA, Census/BLS-derived). The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, the city’s most visible anchor institution, moved the opposite direction: enrollment reached 1,097 students in fall 2025, up nearly 9% from the prior year (The Bradford Era).

Is Bradford, PA’s population growing or shrinking? Shrinking, by roughly 1% a year on the most recent estimate, a slow decline rather than a sudden drop, while the local university campus grew enrollment nearly 9% over the same period.

Housing stock and what it means for buyers

Bradford’s downtown core, a 53-acre district with 163 total resources and 136 (84%) rated as historically contributing, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 (National Register nomination, via Livingplaces), evidence of a building stock concentrated in the city’s late-1800s oil-boom and early-1900s growth period. A precise, sourced share of pre-1960 housing units at the ZIP or city level isn’t published; that figure is an open research task, not something estimated here. What buyers can act on: knob-and-tube wiring, lead paint, cast-iron plumbing, and un-upgraded insulation are common inspection findings in a building stock this old, and a market where homes often sell as-is means those findings surface at inspection, not on the listing sheet.

Selling in Bradford: pricing in a thin-inventory market

Overpricing here costs time more than it costs dollars once a genuine buyer appears. Price at or slightly below the most recent comparable closing in your specific price band, not the city-wide median, which swings by 9% to 40% between reports depending on source and month. Expect the first 30 days to draw the most serious traffic, and treat any offer above 92% of list within that window as a signal the initial price was close to correct.

For agents and appraisers: comping pitfalls specific to this market

Two traps are specific to this geography. First, “Bradford County, PA” and “Bradford, PA 16701” are different places entirely: Bradford city sits in McKean County in the state’s northwestern corner, while Bradford County is a separate county roughly 150 miles east, on the New York border near Towanda. Pulling county-level comps or market reports under the wrong “Bradford” produces numbers that look plausible for a market that isn’t this one. Second, 16701 sits three miles from the New York state line, and comps in this ZIP can surface alongside New York MLS coverage; confirm which MLS feed and which county a given comp actually belongs to before using it in a report.

What should an out-of-area agent watch for when comping property in 16701? Confirm the comp is drawn from McKean County, Pennsylvania, not Bradford County, Pennsylvania, a separate county roughly 150 miles away, and verify which MLS the listing is sourced from given the ZIP’s proximity to the New York border.

Signs this market isn’t a fit for you

Bradford rewards buyers and investors who price for a small, slow-shrinking market and treat every headline “median price” as one source’s snapshot, not the market’s single truth.