South Berkeley & Southside

Tanja Odzak is a Top East Bay Realtor with eXp Realty, helping buyers and sellers in Berkeley and across the East Bay. South Berkeley is the southern part of the city's flatlands, a neighborhood of older homes on gridded streets, centered on Adeline Street, Ashby Avenue, and the Ashby BART station, with the historic Lorin District among Berkeley's oldest commercial areas. Southside is the neighborhood just south of the UC Berkeley campus, stretching from Bancroft Way to Dwight Way, home to Telegraph Avenue and to landmarks by Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan. They sit side by side along Dwight Way, and this page covers both. When we refer to South Berkeley & Southside, we are including the Southwest Berkeley, Southside, and South Campus areas the MLS lists in that term, along with the homes inside the Southside boundary we use for our own Southside home search.

At a glance: In the 12 months through September 2026, the median sale price of a single-family home in South Berkeley & Southside was $1,150,000, across 35 sales. Homes sold for about 120.9% of their list price, and the middle sale took 14 days on the market.

The land was once part of Rancho San Antonio, the huge land grant given to Luis María Peralta in 1820. By 1872, the Berkeley Land and Title Association had mapped the grid of streets you still see today, before a single house stood on it. The first home went up in 1873 for Mark Ashby, whose family name lives on in Ashby Avenue.

The Lorin District grew up around a busy streetcar intersection on Adeline Street, and two banks anchored it. One of them, the South Berkeley Bank at 3290 Adeline Street, was designed in 1906 by John Galen Howard, the University of California's supervising architect. Its Mission Revival front has Beaux-Arts details and a rounded corner entrance, and Howard built it of reinforced concrete in response to the 1906 earthquake and fire. It is a City of Berkeley Landmark.

A few doors down, the Lorin Theater at 3332 Adeline Street was South Berkeley's neighborhood movie house. Architect James Plachek redesigned it in 1921 with 1,500 seats, an organ for silent films, and an Italian Renaissance front. Since 1954 it has been home to the Phillips Temple C.M.E. Church, whose congregation restored the facade and strengthened the building for earthquakes in 1999. It is a City of Berkeley Landmark too.

The Berkeley City Club at 2315 Durant Avenue was designed by Julia Morgan, the first woman licensed as an architect in California, and opened in 1930 as the clubhouse of the Berkeley Women's City Club. Its blend of Moorish and Gothic design makes it one of Morgan's best-known works. It is a California Historical Landmark, on the National Register of Historic Places, and a Berkeley Landmark, and today it operates as a historic hotel and event space.

A few blocks south, the First Church of Christ, Scientist at Dwight Way and Bowditch Street was designed by Bernard Maybeck in 1910. It combines Craftsman design with Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic touches, under a pair of great crossed trusses, and is widely considered one of Maybeck's masterpieces. It is a National Historic Landmark and a Berkeley Landmark.

People's Park, the block bounded by Haste Street, Bowditch Street, and Dwight Way just east of Telegraph Avenue, became a symbol of the activism of the late 1960s, part of the era of protest and civil rights activism that shaped UC Berkeley and the city. Activists turned the university-owned lot into a park on April 20, 1969, and the conflict over the university's plans for it became one of the defining moments in Berkeley's history. The City of Berkeley declared it a historical and cultural landmark in 1984, and the university is now building new housing on the site.

Just to the east, Panoramic Hill rises as a National Register historic district of Arts and Crafts homes.

South Berkeley is mostly older homes on flat, gridded streets, the kind of blocks laid out before the automobile. Because the streets were mapped in the 1870s and filled in over the following decades, homes from many different eras can stand side by side on the same block. Southside is one of the denser parts of Berkeley, close to campus, with apartment buildings and older homes on its gridded streets.

What should you look for in an older South Berkeley or Southside home? Old homes come with old-home issues. Many older homes still have their original electrical panels, and some carry knob and tube wiring that still remains. A building that has been divided, added onto, or converted over the years is worth checking for permits, since unpermitted work can surface late in a sale. For a condominium, read the association documents closely. Berkeley also has its own sewer lateral ordinance: a Sewer Lateral Certificate of Compliance from the City is needed before escrow closes, some transfers are exempt, and a certificate from EBMUD doesn't satisfy it. Who handles it is negotiable between buyer and seller, and it's worth testing the line early. Berkeley's energy score rule under the Building Emissions Saving Ordinance (BESO) covers single-family homes and duplexes, not condominiums.

Ashby BART puts downtown Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco within reach without a car, and AC Transit buses cross the neighborhood. Downtown Berkeley's BART station and theaters are a short trip northwest of Southside, and the UC Berkeley campus is right across Bancroft Way, with Sather Gate, Sather Tower's observation deck, Strawberry Creek under the redwoods, and the Greek Theatre up the hill. Tanja earned her Bachelor of Science there, and the campus is open to everyone.

Buyers who look at South Berkeley usually want an older home on a flat street, close to BART, with theaters, markets, and restaurants in the neighborhood and the university a short trip away. Buyers who look at Southside usually want a home right next to the university, with Telegraph Avenue's bookstores and cafes, landmark architecture, and downtown close by.

Tanja Odzak knows what to check in an older home or building, from the panel and the sewer line to the permits, and how a Berkeley sale works. If you're weighing a move to South Berkeley or Southside, that's worth a conversation.