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 El Paso might be more expensive than living in rural Texas, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those El Paso 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 El Paso are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
82 cost of living index
84 cost of living index
72 cost of living index
85 cost of living index
93 cost of living index
76 cost of living index
82 cost of living index
99 cost of living index
96 cost of living index
93 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Texas’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest El Paso hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in El Paso, 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 47 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 El Paso.” We’re lookin’ at you, Buena Vista.
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 El Paso for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Buena Vista | 82 |
| 2 | Medina | 84 |
| 3 | Eagle | 72 |
| 4 | Sunset Heights | 85 |
| 5 | Mission Hills | 93 |
| 5 | Chihuahuita | 76 |
| 7 | Save The Valley 21 | 82 |
| 8 | North Hills | 99 |
| 9 | Coronado | 96 |
| 10 | East Side | 93 |
| 11 | Ysleta Mission Valley | 84 |
| 12 | Northeast | 87 |
| 13 | Redd-Mulberry | 96 |
| 14 | Lower Valley | 83 |
| 15 | Castner Heights | 93 |
| 15 | Album Park | 90 |
| 17 | Borderland | 93 |
| 18 | Mountain Arroyos | 104 |
| 19 | El Paso Lower Valley | 80 |
| 20 | Central | 85 |
| 21 | Northwest | 99 |
| 22 | South Mesa | 76 |
| 23 | Roberts | 85 |
| 24 | Las Palmas | 94 |
| 25 | Cielo Vista | 92 |
| 26 | Montoya Heights | 94 |
| 27 | Las Tierras | 95 |
| 28 | Magoffin | 76 |
| 28 | Manhattan Heights | 86 |
| 30 | Pasadena | 82 |
| 30 | Five Points | 85 |
| 32 | Thomas Manor | 84 |
| 32 | Houston Park | 83 |
| 34 | A Presidential Neighborhood | 81 |
| 35 | Rim Area | 110 |
| 36 | Silver Springs Village | 110 |
| 37 | El Paso High | 86 |
| 38 | United | 85 |
| 38 | Stoneridge | 88 |
| 40 | San Juan | 82 |
| 41 | Alameda Business | 81 |
| 42 | Chamizal | 81 |
| 42 | Lakeside | 83 |
| 44 | Carpenter | 85 |
| 45 | Golden Hills | 86 |
| 46 | Mesa Hills | 93 |
| 47 | Friends Of Karl Wyler | 88 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 47 El Paso neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in El Paso
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in El Paso where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in El Paso are Buena Vista, Medina, Eagle, Sunset Heights, Mission Hills, Chihuahuita, Save The Valley 21, North Hills, Coronado, and East Side.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in El Paso aren’t all cheap. Friends Of Karl Wyler takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in El Paso.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Texas? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In El Paso FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in El Paso?
Buena Vista is the cheapest neighborhood in El Paso for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Medina and Eagle are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in El Paso?
The cheapest neighborhoods in El Paso are Buena Vista, Medina, Eagle, Sunset Heights, Mission Hills, Chihuahuita, Save The Valley 21, North Hills, Coronado, and East Side. We ranked all 47 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 El Paso ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in El Paso?
Friends Of Karl Wyler lands at the expensive end of the 47 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
