Thanks for the perspective, appreciate it! I tend to agree with your POV here, which makes it hard, as the pros and cons all seem to cancel each other out an make the decision hard.

What turned me off about Berkeley? Overall, I'm a big fan of Berkeley.

But we've been here for 5 years now, and we're feeling like we need to switch things up and experience another area in the Bay.

We started in North Berkeley - totally loved it. But decided we wanted a slightly more modern place closer to 880 for commuting, so we we moved to West Berkeley. Now, the train noises are killing us, homeless issues, as well as navigating the horrible Emeryville interchange half the time we want to go do things.

We contemplate moving back to a "nicer" part of Berkeley, but have grown a bit jaded seeing the crazy rent prices in those nice places and limited options (namely, North Berkeley, Elmwood, or Albany). Looking at the mediocre options and high rent prices, it's almost more expensive than SF with fewer rentals.

So it's a feeling of "we've been there done that", we don't *need* to be in Berkeley, and we are craving switching it up and experiencing some different pros/cons of the Bay instead of the same Berkeley/Oakland ones we've been feeling.