Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communications and more specifically to search space configuration in systems utilizing devices with limited communications resources, such as machine type communication (MTC) devices and enhanced MTC (eMTC) devices. An example method generally includes receiving a physical random access channel (PRACH) signal from a first user equipment (UE) on a first narrowband region within a wider system bandwidth and transmitting, in response to the PRACH signal, a random access response (RAR) signal in a first search space in a second narrowband region in at least a first subframe.