Live in San Jose

San Jose Estates was a creature of the Florida boom. A charter was granted in January 1925 for about 1,000 acres south of the city; John Nolen planned them, Donald Ross laid out the golf course, and Marsh & Saxelbye designed the buildings in Mediterranean Revival. Sales opened that July and the first phase sold out within weeks. The San Jose Hotel opened on New Year's Day 1926, the same year the boom collapsed; the hotel closed in 1928 as the company went bankrupt, and the Bolles School moved into it in 1933. In 1985 the National Register listed 24 San Jose Estates buildings one by one.

This guide is a small part of what the name covers. It takes the area the San Jose Neighborhood Association filed with the City, 683 acres east of San Jose Boulevard between St. Augustine Road, Powers Avenue and Sierra Madre Drive, around the San Jose Country Club. It stops short of the river, so the riverfront and the Bolles School, in the old hotel, are outside it. Inside are the club and five of the listed houses, on Via de la Reina and Ponce de Leon Avenue, and Samuel W. Wolfson High School on the eastern edge.

It is two places in one count. The 2020 census found 5,402 residents, up from 5,220 on about the same ground in 2010, and owners in only 828 of the 2,232 occupied homes, 37%. But two blocks of apartments on the north-east side, toward Powers Avenue, held 2,641 of the residents and 1,136 of the 1,404 rented homes. On the other 39 blocks owners lived in three homes in four. A buyer of a house is buying into the second place; the average describes neither.

FEMA's draft map draws a flood zone where its current one has none. The effective map of 2018 puts no resident in the 1% zone. The preliminary revision issued in May 2025, which covers almost the whole area and is not yet in force, draws an approximate zone A, with no base flood elevation, over 2.8% of it: the block of 444 apartments that held 1,009 residents. No named stream runs inside the line on the Census Bureau's water map; Bennett Branch Creek begins just beyond the north-east corner. The reference point is in no JaxReady evacuation zone, and 4,600 residents are outside all six. The sources read here do not say whether Irma's record river in 2017 reached these streets. Flood insurance is a separate policy, and from 2027 most Citizens policies with wind cover must carry one.

No price index follows the line. Every block is in ZIP code 32217, where Zillow's typical value was $309,874 in August 2026, up 0.7% on the year, but the ZIP held almost four times as many people. At 17.7412 mills for 2025, a homestead at that figure owes about $4,769 a year and a landlord about $5,498; at Duval County's $335,000 single-family median a homestead owes about $5,215. Save Our Homes resets on sale, so the seller's bill understates yours, and City garbage and stormwater fees add about $34.50 a month. No community development district was found here, and the National Register listing adds no City review, though the country club is also a City landmark. The arithmetic is on the Jacksonville page.