San Jose, CA

In February 2017, Coyote Creek flooded through downtown San Jose and displaced more than 14,000 residents from Japantown and Rock Springs—neighborhoods that had not flooded in decades. The event was rapid and expensive, demonstrating that Silicon Valley's premium real estate assumptions do not override creek hydrology. San Jose's earthquake score of 87 sits at the 94th national percentile—the city's dominant long-run hazard, a legacy of Loma Prieta in 1989 that the regional memory has not fully set aside. Our read: the tension in San Jose buyer decisions is usually between seismic retrofit economics and neighborhood-level flood surprises. West San Jose's premium submarkets in 95129 still carry meaningful seismic exposure. Downtown's 95110 zip code faces both liquefaction sensitivity and older infrastructure questions. South San Jose's creek corridors can produce heat and flood combinations that regional averages mask. Annual premiums range from $1,300 to $3,300—one of the lower ranges in this dataset—but earthquake insurance is a separate, discretionary purchase whose economics force a genuine decision: the deductibles are high, the premiums add substantially to annual costs, and the risk of not having coverage is not theoretical in a region where the Hayward Fault runs beneath the East Bay hills. Creek-adjacent neighborhoods deserve more flood review than city marketing implies—Coyote Creek showed what happens when buyers rely on decade-old assumptions. Heat at the 61st national percentile is moderate but rising, with South San Jose running warmer than coastal Bay Area comparables. The real San Jose diligence checklist starts with the seismic disclosure and the flood zone map—in that order.

— Open Data Collective