Best neighborhoods for a long stay in Palm Springs

Neighborhoods · Palm Springs

Which Palm Springs neighborhood should you choose for a month or more?

Choose by how much you want to use the car. Downtown and the Uptown Design District put food, coffee and errands within walking distance. Movie Colony sits just east of Downtown and is quiet but still walkable. Deepwell, Sunmor, Racquet Club Estates and the Indian Canyons neighborhood are calm, residential and assume you will drive. All of them are inside a city that is flat and unusually pedestrian for the desert.

Downtown and Uptown. The core along Palm Canyon Drive is more walkable than anywhere else in the Coachella Valley, and over a long stay that is a real advantage rather than a line in a listing: it is the difference between driving for coffee and walking for it. The trade is noise and traffic, worst in season, on the Thursday evening street-fair night, and through February. If you want the walkability without living in the middle of it, look a few blocks east or west of the corridor.

Movie Colony and Las Palmas. Movie Colony is immediately east of Downtown — older streets, mature landscaping, larger lots, and you can still walk into town for dinner. Las Palmas sits northwest against the mountains, is greener and grander, and picks up afternoon shade from the ridge earlier than the rest of the city, which matters more than you would expect in a warm month. Both are quiet at night, and both sit at the more expensive end of the market.

Sunmor, Racquet Club Estates, Deepwell and Indian Canyons. These are the classic mid-century neighborhoods and a lot of long-stay homes are in them. Sunmor is central and near the airport side of town. Racquet Club Estates is farther north, flat and very quiet, and feels the pass wind more than most. Deepwell is south, with wide streets and established gardens. The Indian Canyons neighborhood at the south end is the quietest of the lot and closest to the canyon trailheads, at the cost of being farthest from Downtown. All of them assume a car for groceries and anything valley-wide.

Three honest constraints apply everywhere here. Palm Springs International Airport is inside the city, so depending on the neighborhood and the runway in use you will hear aircraft. Orientation matters enormously: a west-facing patio is unusable on a summer afternoon and lovely in January, and a pool that sits in shade from October is a pool you will not swim in. And the San Gorgonio Pass funnels wind through constantly, with the north end of the city feeling it more than the south. Ask which way the outdoor space faces before you commit to a home for months. Many homes in Palm Springs offer a pool, a carport or covered parking, and a single-level plan — all worth confirming on the listing rather than assuming.

If you're here for a month or more

For a stay of a month or more, walkability and how the outdoor space is oriented matter more than square footage. Take Downtown, Uptown or Movie Colony if you want the car parked most days; take Deepwell, Sunmor, Racquet Club Estates or the Indian Canyons neighborhood if you want quiet and do not mind driving to the supermarket. Every MidStays home is inspected by a local manager against its listing before you arrive, so the patio, the parking and the pool are what the photos showed — and that manager is the person to ask which way the sun crosses the yard.