Antioch, California

Antioch sits on the Delta (part river/part estuary), which means you can live here and live on the water. If you’re big into boating and boating culture (or you just like living on the water) then you’ll like it here. The nifty thing about the Delta is that it connects to San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific. This means you can motor or paddle your way to as many major spots in NorCal as your little heart desires.

Antioch is a bedroom community and as such there aren’t jobs in town. That means you might have to navigate Highway 4 to get to work. This is one of the gnarliest freeways in the East Bay, an area notorious for bad traffic. Seriously, you don’t want to drive this road every day. Fortunately, there is a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stop in Antioch so we can not recommend strongly enough to either work from home if possible or make sure your job is conveniently accessed via the train.

As noted Antioch is a bedroom community but those beds sit in a pretty wide variety of homes. There are plenty of single-family homes but also tons of apartment/condo and townhome options. This means that while the city is geared towards families, the water culture and housing options bring a different energy to the city than most sleepy suburbs. Families have a lot to do here with the Antioch Water Park providing a fun escape from the summer heat.

There’s also access to beautiful outdoor spaces at the Down Wetlands Preserve and Black Diamond Mines. Both offer amazing hiking and trail walking options nearby. In addition to lots of smaller parks, there is also the Antioch Community Park which has sports fields, playgrounds, camping, fishing, a wonderful beach, and a pool. You also have more adventurous entertainment options at the Antioch Speedway and Antioch Paintball Park. Perhaps even more important for singles, couples, and families is the amazing water play options with paddle-boarding, kayaking, boating, swimming, and more all at your doorstep on the Delta.

To see what locals get up to for fun in Antioch check out the calendar of events.

We highly recommend visiting Antioch and staying in the community in a VRBO rather than a hotel to get a feel for living among the locals. You can receive discounted fares on travel via our partnership with Expedia as well.

Antioch is a pretty big school district with a mix of strong and weaker schools with an overall average of C+ on niche.com Geography is everything in terms of the quality of the schools for your kiddos. Most of the weaker schools are north and west and the southern and eastern neighborhoods have the pearls. It should be noted that even in some of the weaker areas and schools the teachers are generally praised for caring for the students and the knocks seem to come more from issues around resources for extracurricular activities.