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 Washington might be more expensive than living in rural Washington Dc, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Washington 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 Washington are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
169 cost of living index
138 cost of living index
135 cost of living index
139 cost of living index
135 cost of living index
155 cost of living index
162 cost of living index
155 cost of living index
111 cost of living index
110 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Washington Dc’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Washington hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Washington, 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 34 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 Washington.” We’re lookin’ at you, Takoma Park.
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 Washington for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Takoma Park | 169 |
| 2 | Catholic University-Brookland | 138 |
| 3 | Fort Totten-Upper Northeast | 135 |
| 4 | Downtown | 139 |
| 5 | South West | 135 |
| 5 | Logan Circle | 155 |
| 5 | Glover Park | 162 |
| 8 | Adams Morgan | 155 |
| 9 | Deanwood | 111 |
| 10 | Anacostia | 110 |
| 11 | Au-Tenleytown | 204 |
| 12 | Stadium-Armory | 134 |
| 13 | Cleveland Park | 183 |
| 14 | Dupont Circle | 156 |
| 15 | Capitol Hill | 160 |
| 16 | Barnaby Woods | 205 |
| 17 | Friendship Heights | 188 |
| 18 | Chevy Chase | 194 |
| 18 | Foggy Bottom | 136 |
| 20 | Mount Pleasant | 156 |
| 21 | Brentwood | 132 |
| 22 | Woodley Park | 202 |
| 22 | Petworth | 173 |
| 24 | Ledroit Park | 162 |
| 25 | U Street Corridor | 172 |
| 26 | Columbia Heights | 154 |
| 27 | Brightwood | 159 |
| 28 | The Palisades | 227 |
| 28 | Mount Vernon Square | 157 |
| 30 | Georgetown | 218 |
| 31 | Shaw | 167 |
| 32 | Kalorama | 248 |
| 33 | Berkley | 225 |
| 34 | Foxhall Village | 207 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 34 Washington neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Washington
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Washington where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Washington are Takoma Park, Catholic University-Brookland, Fort Totten-Upper Northeast, Downtown, South West, Logan Circle, Glover Park, Adams Morgan, Deanwood, and Anacostia.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Washington aren’t all cheap. Foxhall Village takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Washington.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on Washington Dc? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Washington FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Washington?
Takoma Park is the cheapest neighborhood in Washington for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. Catholic University-Brookland and Fort Totten-Upper Northeast are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Washington?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Washington are Takoma Park, Catholic University-Brookland, Fort Totten-Upper Northeast, Downtown, South West, Logan Circle, Glover Park, Adams Morgan, Deanwood, and Anacostia. We ranked all 34 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 Washington ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Washington?
Foxhall Village lands at the expensive end of the 34 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
