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 Des Moines might be more expensive than living in rural Iowa, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Des Moines 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 Des Moines are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
85 cost of living index
82 cost of living index
89 cost of living index
82 cost of living index
81 cost of living index
89 cost of living index
87 cost of living index
87 cost of living index
80 cost of living index
87 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Iowa’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Des Moines hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Des Moines, 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 51 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 Des Moines.” We’re lookin’ at you, Garton West.
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 Des Moines for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Garton West | 85 |
| 2 | McKinley School | 82 |
| 3 | Valley High Manor | 89 |
| 4 | Capitol View South | 82 |
| 5 | East Village | 81 |
| 6 | Laurel Hill | 89 |
| 6 | Fairmont Park | 87 |
| 8 | Douglas Acres | 87 |
| 9 | New Vision | 80 |
| 10 | Accent | 87 |
| 11 | Capitol East | 82 |
| 12 | Martin Luther King Jr Park | 80 |
| 13 | Gray’s Woods | 87 |
| 14 | Waterbury | 106 |
| 15 | Cheatom Park | 83 |
| 16 | Fairground | 83 |
| 17 | Bloomfield-Allen | 92 |
| 18 | Capitol Park | 83 |
| 19 | Oak Park | 88 |
| 20 | Southwestern Hills | 97 |
| 21 | Greater South Side | 88 |
| 22 | Mondamin Presidentia | 83 |
| 23 | Waveland Park | 98 |
| 24 | Beaverdale | 95 |
| 24 | Union Park | 88 |
| 26 | Highland Park | 87 |
| 26 | Lower Beaver | 94 |
| 28 | Waveland Woods | 93 |
| 29 | Meredith | 98 |
| 30 | Indianola Hills | 88 |
| 31 | Merle Hay | 92 |
| 32 | Magnolia Park | 89 |
| 33 | South Park | 89 |
| 34 | Drake | 91 |
| 35 | King-Irving Park | 83 |
| 35 | Salisbury Oaks | 114 |
| 37 | River Bend | 86 |
| 37 | North Of Grand | 91 |
| 39 | Ingersoll Park | 103 |
| 39 | Chautauqua Park | 89 |
| 41 | Woodland Heights | 90 |
| 41 | Westwood | 104 |
| 43 | Linden Heights | 115 |
| 43 | Drake Park | 88 |
| 45 | Kirkwood Glen | 85 |
| 46 | Greenwood | 107 |
| 47 | Jordan Park | 86 |
| 48 | Downtown Des Moines | 110 |
| 49 | Arbor Peaks | 95 |
| 50 | Sherman Hill | 106 |
| 51 | Somerset | 95 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 51 Des Moines neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Des Moines
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Des Moines where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Des Moines are Garton West, McKinley School, Valley High Manor, Capitol View South, East Village, Laurel Hill, Fairmont Park, Douglas Acres, New Vision, and Accent.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Des Moines aren’t all cheap. Somerset takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Des Moines.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Iowa? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Des Moines FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Des Moines?
Garton West is the cheapest neighborhood in Des Moines for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. McKinley School and Valley High Manor are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Des Moines?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Des Moines are Garton West, McKinley School, Valley High Manor, Capitol View South, East Village, Laurel Hill, Fairmont Park, Douglas Acres, New Vision, and Accent. We ranked all 51 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 Des Moines ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Des Moines?
Somerset lands at the expensive end of the 51 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
