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 Milwaukee might be more expensive than living in rural Wisconsin, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Milwaukee 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 Milwaukee are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
87 cost of living index
84 cost of living index
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87 cost of living index
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The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Wisconsin’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Milwaukee hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Milwaukee, 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 182 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 Milwaukee.” We’re lookin’ at you, Rufus King.
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 Milwaukee for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rufus King | 87 |
| 2 | Bradley Estates | 84 |
| 3 | Brynwood | 84 |
| 4 | Menomonee River Hills East | 89 |
| 5 | Triangle | 90 |
| 6 | Fairview | 94 |
| 7 | Long View | 92 |
| 8 | Havenwoods | 87 |
| 9 | Maitland Park | 95 |
| 10 | Menomonee River Hills | 91 |
| 11 | Franklin Heights | 84 |
| 12 | Land Bank | 89 |
| 13 | Servite Woods | 86 |
| 14 | Hawley Farms | 95 |
| 15 | Burnham Park | 89 |
| 16 | Green Moor | 95 |
| 17 | Graceland | 89 |
| 18 | Layton Park | 92 |
| 19 | Silver City | 88 |
| 20 | Wahl Park | 87 |
| 20 | Whispering Hills | 86 |
| 20 | Granville Woods | 86 |
| 23 | Honey Creek Manor | 94 |
| 24 | Lincoln Park | 88 |
| 25 | Timmerman Airport | 92 |
| 26 | Muskego Way | 87 |
| 27 | New Coeln | 95 |
| 28 | McGovern Park | 86 |
| 29 | North Meadows | 84 |
| 30 | Golden Valley | 98 |
| 31 | Historic Mitchell Street | 86 |
| 32 | Wick Field | 96 |
| 32 | Hawthorne Glen | 96 |
| 34 | Dineen Park | 89 |
| 35 | Arlington Heights | 85 |
| 36 | North Division | 86 |
| 37 | Mill Valley | 97 |
| 38 | Freedom Village | 86 |
| 39 | Mount Mary | 99 |
| 39 | Cooper Park | 98 |
| 41 | Garden Homes | 87 |
| 41 | Old North Milwaukee | 86 |
| 43 | Honey Creek Parkway | 97 |
| 44 | Williamsburg | 86 |
| 45 | Lyons Park | 97 |
| 46 | Town Of Lake | 97 |
| 47 | Metcalfe Park | 86 |
| 48 | Fair Park | 95 |
| 49 | Silver Spring | 88 |
| 50 | Nash Park | 95 |
| 51 | Timmerman West | 92 |
| 52 | Tippecanoe | 96 |
| 53 | White Manor | 95 |
| 54 | Kops Park | 95 |
| 54 | Fairfield | 89 |
| 56 | Clayton Crest | 97 |
| 57 | Harder’s Oaks | 97 |
| 58 | Columbus Park | 91 |
| 59 | Morgandale | 94 |
| 59 | Silver Swan | 89 |
| 61 | Thurston Woods | 88 |
| 61 | Holler Park | 93 |
| 61 | Grasslyn Manor | 91 |
| 64 | Saint Amelian’s | 90 |
| 65 | Wedgewood | 99 |
| 66 | Southgate | 94 |
| 67 | Lindsay Park | 92 |
| 68 | Bluemound Heights | 94 |
| 68 | Red Oak Heights | 99 |
| 70 | Enderis Park | 96 |
| 71 | Melody View | 97 |
| 71 | Pollber Heights | 97 |
| 73 | Capitol Heights | 91 |
| 74 | Saveland Park | 97 |
| 75 | The Valley-Pigsville | 97 |
| 76 | Arlington Gardens | 92 |
| 77 | National Park | 89 |
| 77 | Riverton Heights | 97 |
| 79 | Borchert Field | 84 |
| 79 | Lincoln Creek | 89 |
| 81 | Polonia | 92 |
| 82 | Mitchell Field | 98 |
| 83 | Lincoln Village | 89 |
| 84 | River Bend | 98 |
| 85 | Park West | 86 |
| 85 | Northridge Lakes | 87 |
| 87 | Cannon Park | 96 |
| 88 | Alcott Park | 99 |
| 88 | Morgan Heights | 99 |
| 90 | Hampton Heights | 88 |
| 91 | Forest Home Hills | 89 |
| 92 | Sherman Park | 87 |
| 93 | Jackson Park | 96 |
| 94 | Sunset Heights | 91 |
| 95 | Walnut Hill | 86 |
| 96 | Johnson’s Woods | 93 |
| 97 | Walker’s Point | 90 |
| 98 | Vogel Park | 95 |
| 99 | Little Menomonee Parkway | 95 |
| 100 | Washington Park | 90 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 182 Milwaukee neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Milwaukee
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Milwaukee where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Milwaukee are Rufus King, Bradley Estates, Brynwood, Menomonee River Hills East, Triangle, Fairview, Long View, Havenwoods, Maitland Park, and Menomonee River Hills.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Milwaukee aren’t all cheap. Haymarket takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Milwaukee.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Wisconsin? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Milwaukee FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Milwaukee?
Rufus King is the cheapest neighborhood in Milwaukee for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Bradley Estates and Brynwood are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Milwaukee?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Milwaukee are Rufus King, Bradley Estates, Brynwood, Menomonee River Hills East, Triangle, Fairview, Long View, Havenwoods, Maitland Park, and Menomonee River Hills. We ranked all 182 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 Milwaukee ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Milwaukee?
Haymarket lands at the expensive end of the 182 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
