Where to live in Raleigh
Raleigh is 152 square miles and about 506,000 people on the Census Bureau's 2025 estimate, and the neighborhood decides more about an address here than any citywide figure does: whether a commission reviews the front of the house, which association writes the covenants, which Wake County school the address is assigned to, and how far the drive to the Research Triangle Park runs. These are 20 neighborhood guides, filterable by area below.
Browse dedicated pages for Downtown Raleigh and its districts, Oakwood, Mordecai and Five Points, Boylan Heights, NC State and west Raleigh, North Hills and north Raleigh, South Park and southeast Raleigh.
20 communities across the city
A start on a city of 467,665 people at the 2020 census that publishes no official list of its own neighborhoods. Filter by area of the city, then page through the rest.
Biltmore Hills
Postwar houses on the hills near Walnut Creek around a City park and community center, a mile south of South Park and a generation newer.
Boylan Heights
An early planned suburb on the hill west of the rail yards, under historic district review, looking across at downtown with Dix Park just to the south.
Brentwood
Mid-century ranch houses off Capital Boulevard just north of the Beltline, the older and nearer kind of north Raleigh subdivision.
Brier Creek
A country club subdivision beside the airport and I-540, closer to the Research Triangle Park and Durham than to downtown Raleigh.
Cameron Village
A postwar shopping center planned with its own garden apartments and small houses, where the retail is being rebuilt taller while the streets behind it are a National Register district.
College Park
The neighborhood beside Saint Augustine's where the City has been building and selling new houses on land it assembled, a share of them for buyers under an income limit.
Falls River
A master-planned community near the Neuse north of I-540, with Bedford at Falls River beside it, where the association and the drive south are both part of the price.
Fayetteville Street
The civic spine from the Capitol to the performing arts center, where the housing is towers and condominiums and the tax bill carries the downtown district's levy on top of the city's.
Five Points
The streetcar-era neighborhoods around one Glenwood Avenue intersection, Hayes Barton and Bloomsbury among them, where older houses are enlarged or replaced and the lot is much of the price.
Glenwood South
The restaurant and bar strip on Glenwood Avenue, where most of the housing is newer apartment and condominium towers and the noise on a Friday night is part of the price.
Hillsborough Street
The street along the front of NC State, where housing is built and leased around the academic year and the Hillsborough Street district adds a levy of its own.
Longview Gardens
A postwar subdivision around Longview Park and its lake east of downtown, and a National Register district of mid-century houses.
Photographs: Downtown from Dorothea Dix Park by Abhiram Juvvadi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · A house on Boylan Avenue by Warren LeMay, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · Wachovia Building Company Contemporary Ranch House by Nyttend, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons · William A Curtis House by Pithon314, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Fayetteville Street toward the Capitol by Gerry Dincher, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Vance and Jarvis, eastern corner, in Hayes Barton by Nyttend, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons · Glenwood South by James Willamor, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Holladay Hall at NC State by Warren LeMay, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · Lord Berkley east of Lord Ashley, Raleigh by Nyttend, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
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Showing 1–12 of 20 communities
The five areas at a glance
One of these is drawn by the City and four are not. Downtown is the Downtown Municipal Service District, whose owners pay a levy of 6.8 cents per $100 on top of the city's rate. The other four are the names people here use for the rest of the city, and the line between two of them is our judgment rather than a map anybody publishes.
| Area | Neighborhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown Raleigh and its districts | Fayetteville Street, Glenwood South, Warehouse District | The Downtown Municipal Service District around the Capitol, Fayetteville Street, Glenwood South and the Warehouse District, where almost nothing is a house and the bill carries a levy of its own. |
| Oakwood, Mordecai and Five Points | Five Points, Mordecai, Oakwood | The oldest residential neighborhoods north of downtown, each governed by a different kind of historic or conservation district, and the difference decides what you can build. |
| Boylan Heights, NC State and west Raleigh | Boylan Heights, Cameron Village, Hillsborough Street, Oberlin | Boylan Heights, Oberlin, Cameron Village and the blocks along NC State, where the university sets the rental market and review over the front of the house sets the rest. |
| North Hills and north Raleigh | Brentwood, Brier Creek, Falls River, North Hills, Stonehenge, Wakefield | North of the Beltline, from North Hills out to Wakefield and Brier Creek: subdivisions, associations, and a commute that runs west to the Research Triangle Park. |
| South Park and southeast Raleigh | Biltmore Hills, College Park, Longview Gardens, South Park | The historically Black neighborhoods around Shaw and Saint Augustine's, where the part nearest downtown is changing quickly and the City builds houses of its own. |
Where the neighborhoods come from. The City of Raleigh publishes no official list of neighborhoods. What it publishes is a Neighborhood Registry of organizations, more than four hundred of them, whose areas can overlap and cover only the parts of the city that organized. So each guide here is a neighborhood with a boundary somebody official draws: a City historic or neighborhood conservation overlay district, a National Register historic district, a municipal service district, a Citizens Advisory Council area, or a registered neighborhood organization. Each guide names which one it uses, and its population is the 2020 census count of the blocks inside it.
The four areas outside downtown are ours. The City does publish divisions, and none of them is a way to choose where to live. Its five City Council districts, A to E, are electoral and are redrawn after every census, and one of them runs from Five Points to Brier Creek. Its eighteen Citizens Advisory Council areas, dropped by the City in 2020 and recognized again in February 2024, are compass-point tracts rather than neighborhoods. Its six police districts are current and named by compass point, and they put Five Points and Cameron Village in the Southwest District. The grouping here uses the names residents use instead, and which neighborhood lands in which area is our judgment.
What is not here. Cary, Garner, Knightdale, Wake Forest, Morrisville and Durham are separate municipalities with their own councils and their own tax rates, and none of them is covered on this site yet. A Raleigh mailing address is not proof of a City of Raleigh address either: the postal city runs well past the city limits, and an unincorporated Wake County address pays no City tax. Inside the limits this selection still leaves real places out, and they come as the guides do.