The 10 Cheapest St. Paul, MN Neighborhoods To Live In For 2024


The cheapest St. Paul neighborhoods are Como and Payne Phallen for 2024 based on Saturday Night Science.

Worst Neighborhoods In St. Paul
Source: Wikipedia User | GFDL

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 neighbhorhood in St. Paul might be more expensive than living in rural Minnesota, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.

What exactly are those St. Paul 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 St. Paul are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.

The Cheapest Neighborhoods In St. Paul For 2024

  1. Como
  2. Payne Phallen
  3. West Side
  4. Midway
  5. Greater Eastside
  6. North End
  7. West 7th
  8. Dayton’s Bluff
  9. Battle Creek
  10. Merrlam Park

What’s the cheapest neighborhood to live in St. Paul for 2024? According to the most recent census data, Como looks to be the cheapest St. Paul neighborhood to live in.

At this point, we should make it clear that you do get what you pay for — some of these neighborhoods might not be the best places to live in St. Paul. You could be sacrificing location or crime rates for more space and cheaper groceries.

Read on to see how we determined the places around St. Paul that deserve a little bragging rights, or maybe you’re interested in the worst neighborhoods in St. Paul.

For more Minnesota reading, check out:


Table Of Contents: Top Ten | Methodology | Summary | Table


The 10 Cheapest Neighborhoods To Live In St. Paul For 2024

Overall SnackAbility

9.5
/10

Population: 13,098
Cost Of Living Index: 102 (8th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 2.5 (cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.014 (3rd cheapest)
More on Como: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

7
/10

Population: 30,979
Cost Of Living Index: 96 (2nd cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 2.7 (2nd cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.02 (14th cheapest)
More on Payne Phallen: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

7
/10

Population: 15,044
Cost Of Living Index: 99 (7th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 3.0 (4th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.015 (8th cheapest)
More on West Side: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

8
/10

Population: 12,773
Cost Of Living Index: 102 (8th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 3.3 (6th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.014 (6th cheapest)
More on Midway: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

8
/10

Population: 27,286
Cost Of Living Index: 97 (4th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 2.7 (3rd cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.02 (16th cheapest)
More on Greater Eastside: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

6
/10

Population: 28,571
Cost Of Living Index: 96 (2nd cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 3.4 (8th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.019 (13th cheapest)
More on North End: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

8
/10

Population: 11,523
Cost Of Living Index: 104 (10th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 3.0 (5th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.017 (9th cheapest)
More on West 7th: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

6
/10

Population: 18,746
Cost Of Living Index: 97 (4th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 3.4 (7th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.02 (15th cheapest)
More on Dayton’s Bluff: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

7
/10

Population: 22,340
Cost Of Living Index: 98 (6th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 3.4 (9th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.019 (12th cheapest)
More on Battle Creek: Data | Real Estate

Overall SnackAbility

9
/10

Population: 17,178
Cost Of Living Index: 113 (13th cheapest)
Home Value To Income Ratio: 4.2 (13th cheapest)
Rent To Income Ratio: 0.012 (2nd cheapest)
More on Merrlam Park: Data | Real Estate

Methodology: How We Determined The Cheapest St. Paul Hoods In 2024

To rank the cheapest places to live in St. Paul, 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 17 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 St. Paul.” We’re lookin’ at you, Como.

We updated this article for 2024. This is our fourth time ranking the cheapest neighborhoods to live in St. Paul. Skip to the end to see the list of all the neighborhoods in the city, from cheapest to most expensive.

Summary: Lowest Cost Places To Live In St. Paul

If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in St. Paul where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.

The most affordable neighborhoods in St. Paul are Como, Payne Phallen, West Side, Midway, Greater Eastside, North End, West 7th, Dayton’s Bluff, Battle Creek, and Merrlam Park.

As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in St. Paul aren’t all cheap. Summit Hill takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in St. Paul.

The most expensive neighborhoods in St. Paul are Summit Hill, Summit-University, Saint Anthony, Downtown, and Highland.

We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below.

For more Minnesota reading, check out:

Detailed List Of The Cheapest Neighborhoods To Live In St. Paul For 2024

Rank Neighborhood Cost Of Living Index
1 Como 102
2 Payne Phallen 96
3 West Side 99
4 Midway 102
5 Greater Eastside 97
6 North End 96
7 West 7th 104
8 Dayton’s Bluff 97
9 Battle Creek 98
10 Merrlam Park 113
11 Thomas Dale 93
12 Macalester-Groveland 116
13 Highland 114
14 Downtown 104
15 Saint Anthony 114
16 Summit-University 111
17 Summit Hill 124
About Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar has been in the real estate business for almost ten years now. He originally worked for Movoto Real Estate as the director of marketing before founding HomeSnacks.

He believes the key to finding the right place to live comes down to looking at the data, reading about things to do, and, most importantly, checking it out yourself before you move.

If you've been looking for a place to live in the past several years, you've probably stumbled upon his writing already.

You can find out more about him on LinkedIn or his website.