'Never Enough Eichlers'

Realtors specializing in Eichler homes are predicting a good year for sellers in 2017, especially the first half, with prices buoyed and sales volume restrained by limited inventory—and possibly historic precedent.

"I'm super-bullish on the market, the real estate market in general," says Eric Boyenga, who teams with his wife Janelle to head up the Boyenga Team of realtors in Silicon Valley.

"We expect it to be a pretty explosive first quarter," he says of the coming winter, "just because we've had a pretty soft fall [season]."

Several studies published online are inclined to agree with Boyenga, as do two of his counterparts we interviewed who also specialize in Eichlers.

"I think that 2017, we're going to have a very good year," says Kelly Laule of the Better Living SoCal and Eichler SoCal, who specializes in Eichlers and other mid-century moderns in Orange County. "I think it will be for outside [home sales] as well as Eichlers."

"For sellers in the Bay Area, we do expect to see a very strong market," says Ken Fox of East Bay Modern, based in Oakland, "because of the recent uptick in home values and historically low inventory, but prices are expected to slow as the market moves toward an equilibrium."

The official website of the National Association of Realtors is similarly bullish on 2017 in California, particularly in the Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Inland Empire markets, but notes a few reservations, mostly related to areas with limited inventory.

The three aforementioned locales rank in the top five nationally for metropolitan markets in the Association's 2017 Housing Forecast, with prices estimated to rise between 5 and 7.2 percent depending on the region, and sales volume increasing between 4.9 and 6.9 percent. The Bay Area fares well in this projection too, with even bigger price increases but much slower sales growth—1.17 percent in San Francisco and 1.26 percent in San Jose—because of housing shortages in most or all nine counties around the Bay.