Silver Lake Homes for Sale

Living in Silver Lake

Silver Lake sits south of the White Horse Pike in Clementon, on Silver Lake Drive, Spring Lake Drive, Van Horn Avenue, Washington Avenue, Ohio Avenue and Trout Avenue, with the water itself filling the wooded ground below the streets. First thing worth knowing: there are two separate lakes down here. Silver Lake is the eastern one; Bottom Lake sits immediately west of it, with woods between them. Two bodies of water, two neighborhoods named for them, and listings that reference "the lake" without saying which. Ask.

The housing goes back to the mid-1930s and it is the oldest concentrated stock in the borough — bungalows, Cape Cods and ranchers, three bedrooms, running roughly a thousand to twelve hundred square feet. These are not big houses. What makes the neighborhood is what they sit on: some of the rarest oversized lots anywhere in Clementon, running past six tenths of an acre in a borough where a quarter acre is generous and the whole municipality is under a square mile. Wooded, private, low-traffic streets with the lake a short walk away.

That is the trade this neighborhood offers, and it is worth being plain about it. You are buying a modest ninety-year-old house on an unusually large, quiet, wooded parcel near water. If what you want is square footage, this is the wrong street. If what you want is land, privacy and a setting you cannot buy new anywhere in this county at this number, this is close to the only place in Clementon that offers it.

Check the heating fuel on every listing. Some homes here run natural gas forced air. At least one runs on oil, with electric hot water. Oil heat means a tank, and a tank means a specific set of questions — where is it, above ground or buried, how old, and has it ever been tested or replaced. A buried oil tank is a real issue in New Jersey and it is not a deal-killer, but it is a thing you find out about before you write an offer, not during due diligence. Public water and public sewer serve the section, so at least that part is uniform.

Condition ranges as widely as you would expect at this age. Several of these have been renovated hard — new kitchens with stainless appliances, updated baths, new roof, new drywall, upgraded insulation, and code-compliant electrical, plumbing and HVAC replaced outright, with 200-amp service. Others are original. On a house from the 1930s the year built tells you almost nothing; what matters is the replacement history of the roof, the electrical, the plumbing and the heat, and whether the work was permitted. Fenced yards, patios, porches, sheds and driveway parking are standard, and there are no garages to speak of.

On schools, Clementon's younger students attend the borough's own public school and continue to the regional high school serving the borough — which is why the district field on these listings reads inconsistently from record to record. The White Horse Pike and Route 30 handle the driving and the PATCO station at nearby Lindenwold puts Philadelphia inside a straightforward commute. To compare the rest of the borough, Bottoms Lake is the other lakeside pocket with deep old lots, Clementon Lake is the most affordable detached ground here, Heritage Square is the low-maintenance alternative, and the Clementon homes page carries everything at once.