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 Grand Rapids might be more expensive than living in rural Michigan, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Grand Rapids 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 Grand Rapids are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
82 cost of living index
85 cost of living index
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88 cost of living index
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90 cost of living index
84 cost of living index
Data | Movers
89 cost of living index
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90 cost of living index
Located in
Kent County, Michigan
Highland Park is a city in Wayne County in the State of Michigan, within Metro Detroit. The population was 11,776 at the 2010 census. The city is completely surrounded by Detroit except for a small portion that touches the city of Hamtramck, which is also surrounded by Detroit.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Michigan’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Grand Rapids hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Grand Rapids, 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 32 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 Grand Rapids.” We’re lookin’ at you, Black Hills.
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 Grand Rapids for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Hills | 82 |
| 2 | Garfield Park | 85 |
| 3 | Cherry Run | 94 |
| 4 | Fuller Avenue | 88 |
| 5 | Eastgate | 91 |
| 6 | Alger Heights | 90 |
| 6 | Roosevelt Park | 84 |
| 8 | South East End | 89 |
| 8 | Fulton Heights | 98 |
| 10 | Highland Park | 90 |
| 11 | Michgan Oaks | 92 |
| 12 | Westside Connection | 94 |
| 13 | John Ball Park | 90 |
| 14 | Oakdale | 88 |
| 15 | Creston | 93 |
| 16 | Baxter | 92 |
| 17 | Norteast Citizens Action | 98 |
| 18 | Madison Area | 86 |
| 19 | East Hills | 95 |
| 20 | West Grand | 90 |
| 21 | Auburn Hill | 90 |
| 22 | Midtown | 96 |
| 23 | Eastown | 105 |
| 24 | South East Community | 89 |
| 25 | Ridgemoor | 104 |
| 26 | Belknap Lookout | 100 |
| 26 | Swan | 96 |
| 28 | Heritage Hill | 102 |
| 29 | Millbrook | 104 |
| 30 | South Hill | 100 |
| 31 | Heartside | 104 |
| 32 | Ottawa Hills | 120 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 32 Grand Rapids neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Grand Rapids
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Grand Rapids where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Grand Rapids are Black Hills, Garfield Park, Cherry Run, Fuller Avenue, Eastgate, Alger Heights, Roosevelt Park, South East End, Fulton Heights, and Highland Park.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Grand Rapids aren’t all cheap. Ottawa Hills takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Grand Rapids.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Michigan? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Grand Rapids FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Grand Rapids?
Black Hills is the cheapest neighborhood in Grand Rapids for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Garfield Park and Cherry Run are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Grand Rapids?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Grand Rapids are Black Hills, Garfield Park, Cherry Run, Fuller Avenue, Eastgate, Alger Heights, Roosevelt Park, South East End, Fulton Heights, and Highland Park. We ranked all 32 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 Grand Rapids ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Grand Rapids?
Ottawa Hills lands at the expensive end of the 32 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
