Everything else equal, we can all agree that living in a cheaper place is better than living in a more expensive place.
I’d much rather pay $500/mo in rent than $1,000. And I’d rather pay $2 for coffee than $5.
And while every neighborhood in Bakersfield might be more expensive than living in rural California, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Bakersfield neighborhoods where your dollar goes a little further — you can get that one bedroom instead of the studio?
Instead of relying on public opinion and speculation, we wanted to get the facts straight and determine which neighborhoods in Bakersfield are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
98 cost of living index
118 cost of living index
99 cost of living index
107 cost of living index
95 cost of living index
125 cost of living index
119 cost of living index
126 cost of living index
128 cost of living index
119 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is California’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Bakersfield hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Bakersfield, we had to determine what criteria define “cheap” and then apply Saturday Night Science.
Using Census and extrapolated BLS data, we arrived at the following set of criteria:
- Overall Cost Of Living
- Rent To Income Ratio
- Median Home Value To Income Ratio
We then ranked each neighborhood with scores from 1 to 39 in each category, where 1 was the cheapest.
Next, we averaged the rankings for each neighborhood to create a cheap neighborhood index.
And finally, we crowned the neighborhood with the lowest cheapest neighborhood index, the “Cheapest City Neighborhood In Bakersfield.” We’re lookin’ at you, Castle Ranch.
We updated this article for 2026. Skip to the end to see the list of all the neighborhoods in the city, from cheapest to most expensive.
The full plate
Detailed list of the cheapest neighborhoods to live in Bakersfield for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Castle Ranch | 98 |
| 2 | Haggin Oaks | 118 |
| 3 | Rexland Acres | 99 |
| 4 | Hillcrest | 107 |
| 5 | College Heights-Baker Street | 95 |
| 6 | Stone Meadows | 125 |
| 7 | Rio Bravo | 119 |
| 8 | The Oaks | 126 |
| 9 | Southern Oaks | 128 |
| 10 | Bakersfield Country Club | 119 |
| 11 | Csu Bakersfield | 124 |
| 12 | Seven Oaks | 147 |
| 13 | Stockdale Estates | 141 |
| 14 | Tevis Ranch | 128 |
| 15 | Laurelglen | 122 |
| 15 | Silver Creek | 122 |
| 17 | Amberton | 127 |
| 18 | The Seasons | 123 |
| 19 | Terra Vista | 131 |
| 20 | Park Stockdale | 114 |
| 21 | Spice Tract | 114 |
| 21 | Riviera-Westchester | 116 |
| 23 | La Cresta-Altavista | 111 |
| 23 | Benton Park | 109 |
| 25 | Lakeview | 104 |
| 26 | Eastridge Estates | 124 |
| 27 | Oleander Sunset | 110 |
| 28 | Quailwood | 120 |
| 28 | Artisan | 131 |
| 30 | Southgate | 104 |
| 31 | Stockdale Greens | 119 |
| 32 | Ridgeview Estates | 120 |
| 33 | Sagepointe | 115 |
| 34 | Homaker Park | 100 |
| 34 | Casa Loma | 100 |
| 36 | East Bakersfield | 102 |
| 37 | Tyner Homes | 116 |
| 38 | Downtown | 108 |
| 39 | Stonegate | 139 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 39 Bakersfield neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Bakersfield
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Bakersfield where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Bakersfield are Castle Ranch, Haggin Oaks, Rexland Acres, Hillcrest, College Heights-Baker Street, Stone Meadows, Rio Bravo, The Oaks, Southern Oaks, and Bakersfield Country Club.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Bakersfield aren’t all cheap. Stonegate takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Bakersfield.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on California? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Bakersfield FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Bakersfield?
Castle Ranch is the cheapest neighborhood in Bakersfield for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Haggin Oaks and Rexland Acres are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Bakersfield?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Bakersfield are Castle Ranch, Haggin Oaks, Rexland Acres, Hillcrest, College Heights-Baker Street, Stone Meadows, Rio Bravo, The Oaks, Southern Oaks, and Bakersfield Country Club. We ranked all 39 neighborhoods in the city.
How do you decide which neighborhoods are cheapest?
Three measures: an overall cost of living index, rent-to-income, and home-value-to-income, all from Census tract data. Scoring costs against local incomes keeps one luxury tower from skewing the math.
Is a cheap neighborhood a bad neighborhood?
Not necessarily — this ranking measures what things cost relative to income, nothing else. Check our safest neighborhoods in Bakersfield ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Bakersfield?
Stonegate lands at the expensive end of the 39 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
