Piedmont Avenue, Oakland

Tanja Odzak is a Top East Bay Realtor with eXp Realty, helping buyers and sellers in Oakland and across the East Bay. First thing to clear up about Piedmont Avenue: it's a street and a neighborhood district inside Oakland. It isn't the separate city of Piedmont next door, even though the names get mixed up constantly, including by search engines.

Piedmont Avenue is a sweet, charming stretch with a real neighborhood feel: restaurants, eclectic shopping, and cafes that give the district its local community. Fenton's Creamery, founded in 1894, is featured in Pixar's Up. Piedmont Springs day spa sits nearby. The beautiful, historic Mountain View Cemetery is a neighbor too, and Tanja notes it was "built for the living." Its park-like setting is a popular public green space for walking, picnicking, and taking in the views.

Every year, the neighborhood holds an annual Halloween parade that ends at the cemetery for more Halloween fun. It's the kind of detail you only know if you've actually spent time there, not something you'll find scrolling listings.

Piedmont Avenue Elementary School, on the Avenue itself, shares the neighborhood's name.

At a glance: In the 12 months through September 2026, the median sale price of a single-family home in Piedmont Avenue was $1,450,000, across 27 sales. Homes sold for about 123.3% of their list price, and the middle sale took 13 days on the market.

The homes around Piedmont Avenue are mostly over 100 years old, and mostly beautiful, charming craftsman houses. That age brings real character. It also brings real maintenance questions.

What goes wrong in a 100-year-old Piedmont Avenue home? Drainage and foundation issues are a concern with these homes. On one home Tanja sold there years ago, a sump pump with a backup was installed because the basement would flood without them. That's not a reason to avoid an old home on the Avenue. It's a reason to have someone who knows what to check before you write an offer.

Homes this old have also passed through many owners over the decades, and each one kept the house up in their own way, so condition can vary a lot from one Craftsman to the next.

Buyers drawn to Piedmont Avenue usually want the same thing: a neighborhood district close to home. Coffee on the way home. A market run. A nice restaurant on a Friday night, or a beer out. Piedmont Avenue's charming old homes surround a charming little neighborhood district, with good public transit access, which is why it keeps drawing buyers who want a real local community, not just a house.

The homes around Piedmont Avenue are about a century old, and buyers will look at the basement, the foundation, drainage, and the electrical; on one home here, a sump pump with a backup was the fix for a basement that flooded. Oakland's steps come with every sale. The City's transfer tax is charged in tiers on the whole price, plus Alameda County's own transfer tax. The sewer lateral needs a compliance certificate or a time extension certificate under the East Bay regional program before escrow closes, and the sale triggers a sidewalk compliance certificate, with some exemptions. Who brings the sewer lateral and the sidewalk into compliance, the seller or the buyer, is negotiated. My page on selling your home in Oakland goes through each one.

Tanja Odzak has sold homes on and around Piedmont Avenue and can usually spot an old-home condition issue by eye, often before the inspection report comes back. If you're weighing a home on the Avenue, or thinking about listing one, that's a conversation worth having early.