The neighbourhoods
Downtown & the East Village
USD 1,150–1,600 / month for a 1-bedConverted warehouses and shopfront blocks between the river and the Capitol — the densest walkable stretch in Iowa, with the Farmers' Market on Saturdays and the skywalk overhead
Commute: Walk to every downtown office tower; the four-mile enclosed skywalk means you can do it in February without a coat
- The only part of the metro where living without a car is genuinely realistic
- The skywalk connects most downtown towers, several car parks and a number of flats — a serious quality-of-life asset from December to March
- Saturday Farmers' Market, the Pappajohn Sculpture Park and the Capitol are all on foot
- The most expensive rent per square foot in the metro, and by a clear margin
- Grocery options downtown are thin — most residents still drive for a big shop
- Quiet on weekday evenings once the offices empty; this is a working downtown, not a residential one
Sherman Hill
USD 950–1,400 / month for a 1-bedDes Moines's oldest surviving neighbourhood — a hillside of restored Victorian and Queen Anne houses immediately west of downtown, much of it carved into flats
Commute: 10–15 minutes on foot to downtown, or five by car; on the main bus spine into the centre
- Genuine architectural character — one of the better-preserved Victorian districts in the Midwest
- Close enough to walk downtown and to the Western Gateway sculpture park
- Strong, organised neighbourhood association and a real sense of place
- Almost all stock is converted houses, so quality, insulation and heating bills vary enormously unit to unit
- Street parking only on most blocks
- Some blocks border much rougher ones; walk the specific street at night before signing
Ingersoll–Waterbury & Drake
USD 800–1,150 / month for a 1-bedThe Ingersoll Avenue restaurant and bar corridor running west from downtown, the leafy Waterbury streets behind it, and the Drake University district further north
Commute: 10 minutes by car to downtown; frequent buses along Ingersoll and University
- The best restaurant and bar corridor outside downtown, and cheaper than living downtown to reach it
- A real mix of small apartment buildings, duplexes and 1920s houses, so there is stock at several price points
- Drake's presence keeps a bookshop, cinema and coffee layer alive that a purely residential area would not support
- Student turnover around Drake makes some blocks noisy in term time
- Older housing stock, frequently with window air conditioning rather than central
- Parking around the university is contested during the academic year
Beaverdale
USD 700–1,000 / month for a 1-bed; USD 1,400–2,000 for a 3-bed houseThe 1920s and 30s brick Tudor bungalows — the 'Beaverdale bricks' — on tree-lined streets north-west of downtown, with a small local high street of its own
Commute: 15 minutes by car to downtown via I-235 or Beaver Avenue; buses along Beaver and Douglas
- Exceptional value — the housing stock is genuinely characterful and the prices are among the lowest in the city
- Mature tree canopy, a walkable local strip on Beaver Avenue, and the Beaverdale Fall Festival as a real neighbourhood institution
- Family-oriented without being suburban; you are ten minutes from downtown, not thirty
- Mostly a market of houses — apartment stock is limited and goes quickly
- Des Moines Public Schools rather than a suburban district, which is the trade many families weigh here
- 1920s houses mean 1920s wiring, insulation and basements; get the inspection
South of Grand
USD 1,100–1,600 / month for a 1-bed; USD 2,200–3,500 for a houseThe city's prestige address — large early-20th-century houses on winding streets between Grand Avenue and the river, closest thing Des Moines has to old money
Commute: 5–10 minutes to downtown; among the shortest commutes in the metro
- Very large houses and gardens for the money by national standards
- Minutes from downtown, Gray's Lake and Water Works Park
- Stable, quiet and well-maintained — the part of the city that changes least
- Very little rental stock; this is an ownership neighbourhood and the few rentals are priced accordingly
- Nothing much to walk to beyond the Ingersoll corridor at its northern edge
- Older large houses carry high heating bills in an Iowa winter
West Des Moines — Valley Junction & Jordan Creek
USD 1,100–1,650 / month for a 1-bedA separate city, not a district: the historic Valley Junction strip of antique shops and restaurants at one end, and the Jordan Creek retail and new-build apartment corridor at the other
Commute: 20–30 minutes to downtown Des Moines on I-235; five minutes to the Microsoft and Athene campuses
- West Des Moines Community Schools are the main draw and the reason a lot of families choose this side
- Newest apartment stock in the metro, with central air, in-unit laundry and parking as standard
- Closest housing to the West Des Moines employment cluster — Athene, Wellmark's operations, Microsoft's data centres
- It is a different city with its own taxes, services and school district — the Des Moines postal address does not travel
- Car-dependent by design; the Jordan Creek end is arterials and car parks
- Priciest rents in the metro alongside downtown, without downtown's walkability
How renting works in Des Moines
Leases are typically twelve months and the market runs through Zillow, Apartments.com and the large complexes' own leasing portals, with a substantial small-landlord segment on Facebook and Craigslist. Iowa's Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Law (Iowa Code chapter 562A) is the whole of tenant protection here — there is no rent control and no local rent cap anywhere in the state, so a landlord may raise the rent by any amount at renewal with proper notice. What the statute does give you is concrete: Iowa Code 562A.12 caps a security deposit at two months' rent, requires it to be held in a federally insured bank, savings and loan or credit union, forbids commingling with the landlord's personal funds, and gives the landlord thirty days from the end of the tenancy and receipt of your forwarding address to return it or provide a written statement of the specific reasons for withholding. Note that any interest earned on your deposit during the first five years of a tenancy belongs to the landlord, not to you. On the other side, Iowa Code 562A.27 lets a landlord terminate on seven days' notice for a material breach that is not remedied — a short fuse by national standards.
- 1
Give the forwarding address in writing on the day you hand back the keys
Iowa Code 562A.12 starts the thirty-day deposit clock from the termination of the tenancy AND the landlord's receipt of your mailing address or delivery instructions. Not giving it is the single commonest way an Iowa tenant loses the argument, because the clock never starts. Email it, keep the sent copy, and do not rely on the landlord already knowing where you moved.
- 2
Do not pay more than two months' rent as a deposit
Iowa Code 562A.12 is explicit: a landlord shall not demand or receive a security deposit in excess of two months' rent. It must be held in a federally insured bank, savings and loan association or credit union and must not be commingled with the landlord's own money. If a small landlord asks for more, or for cash with no account named, that is not a negotiating position — it is outside the statute.
- 3
Fix the credit problem before you start viewing
US screening reads no credit file worse than a poor one, and the large complexes run automated decisions. The workable answers are an employer offer letter, a co-signer, several months of rent paid in advance, or a smaller local landlord who will read a file rather than score it. Des Moines's substantial small-landlord segment is genuinely more flexible here than the national portfolio owners.
- 4
Check which city and which school district the address is actually in
The metro is a patchwork of separate incorporated cities — West Des Moines, Urbandale, Clive, Windsor Heights, Johnston, Ankeny, Waukee, Altoona, Pleasant Hill, Grimes, Norwalk — several of which share postal addresses and boundaries with Des Moines proper. They levy their own property tax, run their own services and sit in different school districts. Des Moines Public Schools is Iowa's largest district and covers only part of the metro. Verify both against the exact street address.
- 5
Ask what the heating is and what January costs
The peak utility month in Des Moines is January, not July, and the older stock west and north of downtown ranges from well-insulated to catastrophic. Ask the landlord or the outgoing tenant for the actual winter bills rather than an average — on a badly insulated 1920s conversion the difference between a good and a bad unit can be a hundred dollars a month for four months.
- 6
Do not plan around a garden that needs watering
Central Iowa Water Works imposed the region's first outright lawn-watering ban in June 2025 and did so again in 2026, because nitrate from upstream farmland kept the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers above the federal 10 mg/L drinking-water limit for months — 136 consecutive days on the Raccoon as of 8 June 2026. Treatment capacity, not rainfall, is the constraint. If a rental's selling point is the lawn or an irrigation system, price that as a summer liability rather than an amenity.
Upfront cost
First month's rent plus a security deposit that may not exceed two months' rent under Iowa Code 562A.12 — one month is the common ask in the larger complexes. Application and screening fees apply per adult. There is no broker-fee culture; the large complexes have on-site leasing offices and the small landlords deal direct. Add a utility deposit with MidAmerican Energy if you have no US credit file, and a Des Moines Water Works deposit. Realistically, budget two to three months' rent to move in, and more if you are covering a thin credit file with advance rent.
Where to search
Insider tips
- Work out which side of I-235 you want before you look at listings. Inside it means older housing, shorter commutes and walkability; outside it means newer stock, larger houses and the suburban school districts. Almost every Des Moines housing decision reduces to that.
- If you work downtown, ask whether the building connects to the skywalk. It is not a gimmick — four miles of enclosed bridges is the difference between a pleasant February and a miserable one, and buildings that connect advertise it.
- Beaverdale and Highland Park offer the best value in the city by a wide margin, and both are ten to fifteen minutes from downtown. Newcomers routinely overpay downtown for proximity they could have had for two-thirds of the price.
- Ask whether the unit has central air conditioning or window units. Des Moines summers are humid and the older housing stock west of downtown frequently has neither.
- A garage or a covered space is worth real money here for two separate reasons: hail, which routinely writes off vehicles across central Iowa, and not scraping ice off a windscreen at seven in the morning for four months.
- If the school district matters, be aware that the suburban districts — Waukee, Ankeny, Johnston, West Des Moines, Urbandale — are the reason a lot of families pay a premium to live outside the city. Iowa also runs a universal Education Savings Account programme, which changes the private-school arithmetic; read the state's own page rather than a school's brochure.
Avoid these
- Moving out without giving the landlord a written forwarding address, so the thirty-day deposit clock in Iowa Code 562A.12 never starts.
- Paying a deposit above the statutory two-month ceiling, or in cash with no named account.
- Assuming a Des Moines postal address means the City of Des Moines and Des Moines Public Schools — much of the metro is other cities and other districts.
- Signing on an old conversion without asking what January's heating bill actually was.
- Expecting a warning before a rent increase beyond the notice period — Iowa has no rent cap of any kind.
- Renting a house for the garden and discovering the summer lawn-watering ban.
- Ignoring a seven-day cure notice under Iowa Code 562A.27 because the timescale seems implausibly short. It is not.
Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.