Create a map of all the Eichler homes on the market and it'll be obsolete within a month or two. In the early 1950s, the first owners of these post-and-beam tract homes paid as little as $800 down (about $7,899, in today's dollars), and these days they routinely sell within a few weeks of listing, often for over $1M, thanks to an overheated Bay Area housing market fond of midcentury modernism. While the cul-de-sac full of McMansions has become a routine symbol of despair, developer Joseph Eichler's vision, it would seem, is the kind of suburban idyll we can get down with. So it's no surprise some people are building new Eichlers. What's claimed to be the first one built since 1974 will be finished in about two weeks, in Palm Springs, California, where no Eichler has gone before.
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