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 Memphis might be more expensive than living in rural Tennessee, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Memphis 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 Memphis are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
80 cost of living index
83 cost of living index
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83 cost of living index
88 cost of living index
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81 cost of living index
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88 cost of living index
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Memphis hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Memphis, 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 13 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 Memphis.” We’re lookin’ at you, Berclair-Highland Heights.
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 Memphis for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Berclair-Highland Heights | 80 |
| 2 | White Haven-Coro Lake | 83 |
| 3 | Raleigh | 84 |
| 4 | Parkway Village-Oakhaven | 83 |
| 5 | Hickory Ridge-South Riverdale | 88 |
| 6 | River Oaks-Kirby-Balmoral | 97 |
| 7 | East Memphis-Colonial-Yorkshire | 91 |
| 7 | Shelby Forest-Frayser | 81 |
| 9 | Windyke-Southwind | 108 |
| 10 | Midtown | 88 |
| 11 | Cordova-Appling | 97 |
| 12 | Eads-Fisherville | 95 |
| 13 | Downtown | 86 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 13 Memphis neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Memphis
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Memphis where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Memphis are Berclair-Highland Heights, White Haven-Coro Lake, Raleigh, Parkway Village-Oakhaven, Hickory Ridge-South Riverdale, River Oaks-Kirby-Balmoral, East Memphis-Colonial-Yorkshire, Shelby Forest-Frayser, Windyke-Southwind, and Midtown.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Memphis aren’t all cheap. Downtown takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Memphis.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Tennessee? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Memphis FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Memphis?
Berclair-Highland Heights is the cheapest neighborhood in Memphis for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. White Haven-Coro Lake and Raleigh are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Memphis?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Memphis are Berclair-Highland Heights, White Haven-Coro Lake, Raleigh, Parkway Village-Oakhaven, Hickory Ridge-South Riverdale, River Oaks-Kirby-Balmoral, East Memphis-Colonial-Yorkshire, Shelby Forest-Frayser, Windyke-Southwind, and Midtown. We ranked all 13 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 Memphis ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Memphis?
Downtown lands at the expensive end of the 13 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
