Every Palm Springs neighborhood shares the same summer: under the 1991–2020 NOAA normals, July averages a daily high of 108.6 °F (42 °C). What changes is the housing stock, the distance to Palm Canyon Drive, and how many houses around you are licensed to rent by the night. Below are the four neighborhoods with pages on this site, then the alternatives; the summer power bill is in the cost-of-living guide.
The rule that shapes the market: 28 nights
The city's vacation-rental FAQ, dated 5 November 2025, defines a vacation rental as a single-family home occupied without the owner present for 28 consecutive days or less. Stays of 29 days or more fall outside the ordinance. Apartments and multifamily units cannot be vacation rentals at all, and inside an HOA the owner needs a letter from the association confirming that short stays do not breach the CC&Rs.
Short stays are rationed two ways. Under Ordinance 2118, adopted 12 November 2025, permits applied for after 17 October 2022 allow 26 contracts a calendar year; older ones allow 32, plus four more for stays entirely within July to September. Under Ordinance 2075 of 28 November 2022, the city issues no new certificates in a neighborhood where vacation rentals reach 20 per cent of homes; its neighborhood percentage page is updated weekly. A junior certificate, limited to six contracts a year, is exempt from the cap.
For a renter, a month or a year sits outside the system: any house can be let for 29 nights or more. Under the cap, the house you want for February can instead be licensed and sold by the night; over it, an unlicensed house gets six short bookings a year at most. The Los Angeles Times reported on 1 February 2024 that ten neighborhoods were over the line, among them Racquet Club Estates at 41.6 per cent, Vista Las Palmas and Movie Colony East; none of the four below was.
What rent data exists, and what does not
No verifiable source publishes rents by Palm Springs neighborhood, so this guide prints none. Citywide, RentCafe's report updated 30 September 2026 puts the average apartment at $2,146 a month, a one-bedroom at $1,989 and a two-bedroom at $2,387. Those are unfurnished apartment leases; whole houses and furnished stays price differently and swing by season, as the best-time guide explains.
Old Las Palmas
A profile on the city's website calls Old Las Palmas the first and oldest neighborhood in Palm Springs. CV Independent's history of 16 February 2026 dates it to the mid-1920s and counts about 290 properties between Palm Canyon Drive, Alejo Road, Via Monte Vista and Stevens Road, in styles from Spanish Colonial Revival to midcentury modern.
With Palm Canyon Drive as its eastern edge, downtown is a walk. It suits snowbirds who want to leave the car parked and can pay for a whole house. The trade-off is supply: 290 properties is not many, and since the neighborhood was under the cap in 2024, any of them could be licensed for nightly use.
Movie Colony
The Movie Colony is about 170 homes between Tachevah and Alejo roads, Indian Canyon Drive and Avenida Caballeros, built mostly in the 1930s and 1940s in Spanish Colonial Revival and midcentury styles; nine of its properties are Class 1 historic sites. It lies just east of downtown, so dinner is a walk here too. Movie Colony East, a separate neighborhood across Avenida Caballeros, was over the cap in 2024; the Movie Colony was not.
It grew up beside the El Mirador hotel, whose site is now Desert Regional Medical Center, 1150 N. Indian Canyon Drive, a Level I trauma center serving the Coachella Valley. That makes it the obvious choice for hospital staff, and means ambulance traffic on Indian Canyon. Like Old Las Palmas, it is small.
Deepwell Estates
Deepwell Estates lies south of downtown, about 365 homes by Modernism Weekly's count of August 2017. The city's historic resources survey, posted in December 2018, dates the original tract to 1951–1955 and describes long, low, one-story houses in Spanish Colonial Revival, ranch and midcentury styles, many behind fences and high hedges.
It suits year-round tenants, remote workers and retirees who want a house with a yard and privacy. Palm Canyon Drive is a drive or a bike ride, not a summer walk; most errands mean the car.
Warm Sands
Warm Sands sits just off Ramon Road near Indian Canyon Drive. An undated neighborhood profile the city has hosted since at least 2014 describes the most mixed stock of the four: houses from the late 1920s and 1930s, three-unit apartment buildings, condominiums including the 120-unit Ramona Villas, larger apartment complexes and a mobile home park. It counted 11 resort hotels along Warm Sands Drive, an old figure. Residents walk or bike downtown along Ramon Road.
Apartments and triplexes cannot be vacation rentals, so that part of the stock rents only for 29 nights or more, which makes Warm Sands the likeliest of the four for a twelve-month lease at an apartment price. It suits downtown hotel and restaurant staff. The trade-off is small hotels and their guests next door.
Other areas renters consider
Vista Las Palmas
Across Via Monte Vista from Old Las Palmas, developed in three phases from 1956 by the Alexander Construction Company to designs by Palmer & Krisel and Charles DuBois, per the 2018 survey. It was over the cap in 2024, so houses without a certificate lean toward stays of 29 nights or more.
Racquet Club Estates
North of Vista Chino, the end of town nearest the San Gorgonio Pass. The survey calls it the Alexander company's largest Palm Springs development: Palmer & Krisel post-and-beam houses of 1959–1962. With 41.6 per cent of homes licensed in 2024, many of your neighbors would be short-term rentals. The pass, whose wind farm runs as far as North Palm Springs, is one of the most consistently windy places in the country; with no street-level wind data to go on, visit on a spring afternoon.
Sunrise Park
Between Alejo and Ramon roads, Sunrise Way and Farrell Drive. Its neighborhood organization lists midcentury and ranch houses, condo communities, apartment buildings and senior living, with the city's largest park, the public library and the Mizell Senior Center inside its boundaries, a little over a mile from Palm Canyon Drive and within a mile of the airport. No street-level noise map was found; listen before you sign.
Indian Canyons
ONE-PS, the umbrella group of the city's organized neighborhoods, places it south of Ramon Road; it was not on the 2024 over-cap list. No reliable description of its housing or rents turned up.
Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs and Palm Desert
Looking down-valley for a cheaper year-round lease works only in part. Census Bureau median gross rent for 2020–2024, rent plus utilities, was $1,412 in Desert Hot Springs, $1,562 in Palm Springs, $1,601 in Cathedral City and $1,778 in Palm Desert. RentCafe, updated 1 October 2026, puts the Palm Desert apartment average at $2,242, above Palm Springs, and publishes no figure for the other two.
Choosing by situation
- Winter only, on foot: Old Las Palmas or the Movie Colony; both are small, so start early.
- Staff at Desert Regional: the Movie Colony, or Movie Colony East beside it.
- Downtown hotel and restaurant staff: Warm Sands, by bike along Ramon Road.
- Remote worker staying a year: Deepwell or Sunrise Park, for a house with room for a desk.
- Retiree, year-round: Sunrise Park, with the library and senior center inside it, or Deepwell if you will drive anyway.
- Lowest rent on a twelve-month lease: an apartment or condo in Warm Sands or Sunrise Park, or Desert Hot Springs, the one nearby city of the three with a lower Census median.
- A midcentury house for one to three months: a neighborhood over the cap, such as Vista Las Palmas, where unlicensed houses must mostly rent for 29 nights or more.
Rules and figures move. Everything here was checked in October 2026, against the city's vacation-rental pages and FAQ, RentCafe's reports of 30 September and 1 October 2026, and Census figures that describe 2020 to 2024 rather than today's asking rents. Neighborhood vacation-rental shares change weekly and an HOA can be stricter than the city. Confirm the permit status, the HOA rules and the rent with the owner before you commit.