As part of its previously announced renovation/expansion, JOHN BOWMAN San Jose Homes has moved.

The new address is www.JohnBowmanHomes.com

Book(mark) it, Danno!

Heads up, regular visitors: Your favorite San Jose real estate blog is about to get a major facelift!

I’ve been working with my partners at Inside Real Estate for months to make this happen, and I’m confident you’ll agree with me when the change happens in the next day or so that it was worth the wait.

The design will be cleaner and more elegant. The functionality will be more intuitive and fun. My blog will become a self-contained Web site unto itself, with direct access to MLS property search, my entire collection of video tips for buyers and sellers, and tons of information about the local communities I serve.

One thing won’t change: I will continue to bring you the most insightful analysis of the most creative and in-depth market statistics you’ll find online from any Silicon Valley Realtor – as you should expect from someone who spent nearly three decades as an investigative reporter and business editor before switching to the real-estate game.

After five years of mostly free fall, the San Jose/Silicon Valley real-estate market is changing – and John Bowman San Jose Homes is changing along with it.

Fact: U.S. homes are more affordable now than they have been in the 42 years since record-keeping began, according to a key metric produced by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Meanwhile, the cost of renting has soared to the point that CNBC.com was driven to ask whether the U.S. is in a “rental bubble.”

Are we nearing a tipping point in which renters finally decide that now is the time to buy a home?

I’d like to think so, but history tells me that most prospective homebuyers don’t end up pulling the trigger until after they see home prices and interest rates going up; in other words, after they’ve already missed the market bottom in both. » Read More

A 2011 survey of California homebuyers found that four out of five of them only made an offer on a home once they thought prices “couldn’t get any lower.”

The survey found that the average buyer was just 35 years old – five years younger than was the case as recently as 2007. One big reason for that is that a full 48 percent of them were buying their first home in 2011. » Read More

At a time when the inventory of homes for sale is at an 8-to-10-year low in most Silicon Valley communities, the real picture is even worse for prospective homebuyers than it first appears.

That’s because many homes that are listed for sale are so badly overpriced that a lot of buyers don’t consider them viable options. As usual, there’s no need to take my word for this: Statistics pulled directly from the Multiple Listing Service bear me out. I’ll use San Jose’s desirable Almaden Valley area as an example: » Read More

Marriage is the third-most-common reason people buy homes, according to a survey of 600 Coldwell Banker agents.

No. 4? D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

You may be thinking, “Why did he start out with the third and fourth reasons, and not the first?” Let’s just say I’m a former journalist who is more than willing to bury the lede in the name of life’s little ironies.

Not surprisingly, the list of reasons cited by the agents is dominated by life’s big moments: » Read More

In this video, I explain why I believe the real-estate market in the San Jose and Palo Alto areas is forming a long-term bottom after the worst market downturn in U.S. history. It applies to homes in Almaden Valley, Blossom Valley, Cambrian, Campbell, the Rose Garden and Willow Glen neighborhoods.

In the world of San Jose area real estate, only one story really matters right now: the incredible shrinking inventory.

Almaden Valley has 54 homes for sale on the MLS; only 29 homes are listed for sale in all of Palo Alto. » Read More

Many Silicon Valley homeowners have already taken advantage of lower-than-ever interest rates to save several hundred dollars a month by refinancing their mortgage loans.

But until now, millions of owners across the country who could probably use those savings the most have been locked out of them: those who bought near the top of the market and whose home values are worth less than their current mortgage balance. » Read More

I’ve noted before that, just as Silicon Valley is an area of weather micro-climates, it’s also an area characterized by real-estate micro-markets.

A snapshot of average per-square-foot list prices in eight of the cities and neighborhoods in which I’m active brings those differences into focus.

They range from less than $300 in San Jose’s Blossom Valley area to more than $900 in Palo Alto. It comes as no surprise that the toney San Mateo County city is much further removed financially from Blossom Valley than it is geographically. » Read More