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 Raleigh might be more expensive than living in rural North Carolina, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Raleigh 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 Raleigh are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
96 cost of living index
91 cost of living index
108 cost of living index
92 cost of living index
110 cost of living index
96 cost of living index
148 cost of living index
93 cost of living index
129 cost of living index
159 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is North Carolina’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Raleigh hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Raleigh, 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 18 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 Raleigh.” We’re lookin’ at you, Northeast.
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 Raleigh for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northeast | 96 |
| 2 | South | 91 |
| 2 | North | 108 |
| 4 | Southeast | 92 |
| 5 | Northwest | 110 |
| 6 | West | 96 |
| 7 | Five Points | 148 |
| 8 | Southwest | 93 |
| 9 | North Central | 129 |
| 10 | Glenwood | 159 |
| 11 | Six Forks | 127 |
| 12 | Mordecai | 132 |
| 12 | Falls Of Neuse | 117 |
| 14 | Wade | 157 |
| 15 | Central | 127 |
| 16 | East Raleigh | 122 |
| 17 | South Central | 104 |
| 18 | Hillsborough | 137 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 18 Raleigh neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Raleigh
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Raleigh where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Raleigh are Northeast, South, North, Southeast, Northwest, West, Five Points, Southwest, North Central, and Glenwood.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Raleigh aren’t all cheap. Hillsborough takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Raleigh.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on North Carolina? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Raleigh FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Raleigh?
Northeast is the cheapest neighborhood in Raleigh for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. South and North are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Raleigh?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Raleigh are Northeast, South, North, Southeast, Northwest, West, Five Points, Southwest, North Central, and Glenwood. We ranked all 18 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 Raleigh ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Raleigh?
Hillsborough lands at the expensive end of the 18 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
