Looking for San Jose real estate? 

We help Buyers find and win homes in San Jose and the surrounding metropolitan area.  Whether you’re looking for condos, town homes, or a single-family home, our team of real estate broker REALTORs is ready to help you win a great deal.  Archers Homes serves the Santa Clara county, including the Almaden Valley, Blossom Valley, Cambrian Park, Campbell, Cupertino, Evergreen, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Silver Creek Valley, Sunnyvale, and Willow Glen.

About San Jose

The third largest city in California with 1,047,000 people, San Jose is the county seat of Santa Clara County.  San Jose is located at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay Area and is the Capital of Silicon Valley

San Jose is a very diverse and dynamic city.  San Jose boasts the highest median household income in the United States, reaching over $105,000.  At the peak of the last housing boom in 2007, San Jose homes had a median price of over $663,000.  Today, we have surpassed that mark and are setting new price records each week.

San Jose began as a small farming city and it was the first town established in the Spanish colony Nueva California, founded in 1777 as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe.  San Jose was a corridor for Mexican cowboys to herd cattle up and down the old El Camino Real when it was just a dirt path.  The area was dominated as much by the Missionaries as by wide-roaming gentlemen outlaws like the infamous Joaquin Murieta.

In 1848, after embarrassing Mexico in the controversial Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 authorized by President Polk, the US received the Mexican Cession (including California) in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  For a trifling $18 million settlement, the US received land that covers present day California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico.  Interestingly many of the original Mexican land rights were retained by the local land owners, including the riparian water rights so in contention by Californian farmers today.  Then, in 1849, the official announcement of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento triggered a gold and immigrant rush into California through the port of San Francisco and San Jose.

At the founding of the state of California in 1850, San Jose was incorporated and served as the state’s capital before it was moved to Sacramento.  By the end of the 19th century, San Jose was covered by tens of thousands of acres of apricots, prunes, and other easily sun-dried fruits, along with fresh apples and cherries.  Unfortunately, aside from a few train tracks, transportation was very limited and California did not export much. During WWII, the US military had a huge need for food, so many of the local farmers started selling to the US government, which exported the fruit around the world.  Afterwards, San Jose came to be known as the “Valley of Heart’s Delight” and a large number of family owned fruit processing plants supplied the world’s demand for quality California fruits.

By the 1980s, strong immigration of highly educated professional from Asia and thriving technology firms like Apple transformed San Jose yet again, this time into Silicon Valley.  The rapidly escalating cost of living drove the last fruit processing companies into the central valley, where they still operate today from Chico to Bakersfield.  Once the processing plants left, the local farmers had no way to process their fruit cost-effectively, so they all sold out to developers.  This paved the way for the sprawling suburbs that San Jose is known for today.  The San Jose real estate market saw the highest increase in housing between 1976 and 2001, increasing 936%.  During the recent housing boom of 2004-2007, San Jose housing prices climbed modestly compared to other hot markets around California, with pricing going up by 30-40%.  Since the correction from 2008-2011, pricing have returned to the pre-boom levels of 2003.

As the Capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose is home to an enviable collection of high-tech companies.  Major businesses include Adobe Systems, BEA Systems, Cisco, SunPower and eBay, all of which have their headquarters in San Jose, plus large campuses for Flextronics, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Hitachi and Lockheed Martin.  San Jose is served by the Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport, located just two miles north of downtown.  Within the community, Amtrak provides service throughout the state and to other Western regions.  Local commuting services include Caltrain between San Francisco and Gilroy, the ACE rail that travels to Pleasanton and Stockton, and a local light rail system that connects several San Jose neighborhoods.