Anything north of berkeley and you run into the same suburbia that exists in the south bay with your applebees and big box stores. Emeryville is like that too,

Anything north of berkeley and you run into the same suburbia that exists in the south bay with your applebees and big box stores. Emeryville is like that too, but the North Oakland/Berkeley area is really nice and downtown Oakland is getting better and better. I just moved to the north west corner of oakland (what realtors like to cal NOBE) and it's a really nice place to live. Close to ashby/macarthur bart, temescal, and the "suburbia" crap in emeryville that can be handy to have close at by even if I don't want to spend any time there. If you are thinking of buying the competition is stiff. Took my wife and I 7 months and 6 offers to land a place. We love SF, but the cost of rent and not having an outdoor space made the east bay very attractive. I love it.