Even if your knowledge of modern architecture begins and ends with Wright, you are in luck: The website of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy lists 16 Wright-designed houses for sale, three of them priced under $1 million.

“Some of the smaller, later homes that he designed in the ’40s and ’50s were more suburban—one-story suburban houses in places like Galesburg, Michigan,” says Ron Scherubel, executive director of the Wright conservancy. “You really have to price them in relation to what a similar house, of similar age and size, in the same neighborhood, would sell for, with a premium added to that. But it’s not a huge premium—maybe 25 percent.”

Such homes aren’t always easy to find, as they may be in lesser-known spots, left behind as time has passed and demographics have shifted. Or their sellers may not be promoting their architectural heritage. One strategy for finding an architecturally distinguished home at a reasonable price is to research prolific local mid-century architects and builders. Cliff May, for example, is the acknowledged king of relaxed, modernist ranch homes in Southern California; actor Robert Wagner sold a Cliff May this summer for an estimated $15 million. But May built thousands of more modest homes, with the same airy marriage of indoor and outdoor living spaces. In the May-designed Rancho Estates section of Long Beach, houses sell for as little as the mid-$500,000s.

There are dozens of May-designed tract homes in Dallas as well, sometimes priced as low as the mid-$100,000s. Then there’s modernist trailblazer Charles Dilbeck, who built more than 300 homes in Dallas that combined elements of modernism with handcrafted touches such as exposed beams and stone turrets. Dilbecks are plentiful in the $300,000-to-$500,000 range, and sometimes sell for much less.

The Sarasota, Florida, area is another hotbed of mid-century modernism and is fertile hunting ground for those looking in the sub-$1 million price range. Inspired by the Florida homes of Paul Rudolph, the Sarasota School of Architecture is marked by clean lines, floor-to-ceiling glass, and floor plans that blur the lines between indoor and outdoor space. The price range: as high as $1.6 million but also as low as $350,000. “Getting in at that price is pretty rare, but it happens, depending on the location,” says Sarasota realtor Martie Lieberman.

This August, Nikole Helmer, who runs a dress showroom in Orlando, bought a 1,000-square-foot Sarasota Modern home designed by Gene Leedy for just $210,000. The house, surrounded by a 10-foot wall, needed only minor repairs, but is located in the sleepy city of Winter Haven, about an hour farther inland. “If it was in Sarasota, it would have been at least half a million,” Helmer says. “I bought it for the sole reason that it was a Gene Leedy home. It’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

Peter Viles writes the L.A. Land blog, about the Los Angeles housing market, for LATimes.com.