While most of Santa Clara County (and Silicon Valley too) is filled with ranch style homes, there’s more to the South Bay than the typical rambler. Some areas, such as Los Gatos, Willow Glen, and Palo Alto, seem to be a magnet for diverse types of architecture. Our local multiple listing service, MLSListings.com, includes the following categories for these varied types of homes.  It’s not a perfect list, of course, as several of them have a few sub types (think Spanish and Victorian especially).  Perhaps rather than Eichler, which is a prominently known mid-century modern home, the category should have been the broader mid-century modern, since there are many which are similar but cannot be attributed to Eichler in particular.  In any event, here’s the list:

Today I was wondering which of these types is “in style”, making them sell faster?  Fashion comes and goes, and can be local, or related to price point or other elements, so looking at the architectural style by itself may or may not be helpful – but it is something to consider.  There’s also the subjective element.  My husband and I own a house with a ranch floor plan but a Spanish elevation (or exterior style), built in the late 70s.  Personally, I love all kinds of Spanish style homes, but especially those from the 1920s, the Spanish Revival or Santa Barbara Spanish homes.  If my home were to go on the market, would it be a ranch, a Spanish, or perhaps creatively, a Mediterranean?  You see the problem here!  (Our mls does allow identifying either no types, one type, or several!  So a house could be called a Cabin, a Country English and Traditional – or nothing at all.)