As prices soar, is R.I. real estate still a deal for out-of-state home buyers?
The median sales price of a single-family home in the Ocean State has risen sharply over the past five years, from $309,500 to $512,750.
EAST PROVIDENCE — For Abby and Eric Smallwood, the move from Greater Boston into Rhode Island began 12 years before they first set foot in their East Providence home.
Years ago, a friend of the couple bought a home in the Ocean State for what seemed like pennies, and the prospect of someday doing the same was always in the back of their minds before they followed through on it last year, Abby Smallwood recalled.
“We’ve seen how the price [of homes in Rhode Island] has kind of jumped, you know, slowly, and then it just, like, [took off] over the past two years,” she added. “It was like … ‘Oh, we better do this quick, you know, because it’s almost going to be back to Boston prices, if we don’t go down there.’”
Indeed, Rhode Island has long offered a reprieve for out-of-state homebuyers, spurned by pricey real estate in places such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.
But, Rhode Island’s housing market, much like elsewhere around the country, has been on an exponential upward trajectory in recent years.
“If you look at the median price from … five years ago versus today, it’s nearly doubled,” said Chris Whitten, president of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors.
In May, the median sales price of a single-family home here hit $512,750, breaking the half-million dollar mark for the first time, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. Five years earlier, that figure was $309,500.
So, is Rhode Island real estate still a good value for home buyers looking for savings across state lines?
It’s all about perspective, according to Whitten.
In Massachusetts, the median single-family home price hit $666,125 in May, according to a June report from The Warren Group, which tracks housing trends. In Greater Boston, the median price surpassed $1 million for the first time in June, the Greater Boston Association of Realtors said.
“Here in Rhode Island, we think the prices are getting just out of control, and they are,” Whitten said.
“However, if you’re looking at it, from the perspective of someone in Boston or, South Shore, even MetroWest … you’re looking at prices here in Rhode Island, and you’re going to get either a bigger house for the same amount of money, or you’re going to save a couple hundred thousand dollars by moving over the border into Rhode Island,” Whitten added. “And we’re seeing that a lot.”
Out-of-state buyers have become an increasingly larger share in Rhode Island. In 2016, approximately 15 percent of buyers came from outside of the state — a figure that climbed to about 23 percent last year, according to data from the realtor’s association.
“We have opportunities here,” said Robert Rutley, a broker associate at Mott & Chace Sotheby’s International Realty in Providence. “Even if you want a waterfront property, you can still occasionally find something slightly under the million-dollar mark. Probably not a huge house, but it’s a lot more than you could get in Massachusetts.”
The influx of out-of-state interest comes as Rhode Island also has struggled to lower housing costs. Whitten said it’s more than just demand from over state lines driving prices up, however.
Inventory is still low, and construction is sluggish: Rhode Island ranked among states where new housing construction was the slowest last year, data from the US Census Bureau shows.
“There’s a lot of Rhode Island disdain for the Massachusetts buyers because everyone wants a boogeyman,” Rutley said. “It’s not people necessarily … buying two homes and vacation homes and paying cash. It’s just people like you and I that are trying to purchase their first home or trying to live someplace that’s more affordable.”
Ahead of their move last year, the Smallwoods first moved their business, Myrth Ceramics, out of Somerville to East Providence, where they found more space for the company for about the same rent price, Abby Smallwood said.
Then, in November, they bought their three-bedroom, 1,700-square-foot home, in the city’s Rumford area.
Overall, Abby Smallwood is happy they made the move, but as she said recently, “I don’t think it was the bargain that we thought it was going to be.
“We really stretched our budget,” she said. “We wound up at like, $600,000 and that’s not what we were expecting.”
Jeff Bakkensen said he and his family moved to Rhode Island from Chicago in 2023, when his wife, Dr. Jennifer Bakkensen, an obstetrician-gynecologist, got a job at Women & Infants Fertility Center in Providence. Home prices around Greater Boston ultimately swayed them to Providence, where they snagged a three-bedroom home for approximately $800,000 in Wayland Square, he said.
Zillow recently estimated his home to be worth just over $1 million, “which is kind of crazy to me,” Bakkensen said.
“Could we have bought this house today if we were moving from Chicago? No, I don’t think so,” Bakkensen said.
The Febo family — husband and wife, Anthony and Carlie, and a 4-year-old daughter, Luna— bought a three-bedroom home in East Providence last year for about $500,000 — a drastic contrast to the $800,000 condos they were looking at in the Boston area, said Carlie Febo.
“What we bought [our home] for was much better than what we were thinking we were going to be doing,” she said, but added that it “also would have been great to get in a couple years earlier.”
“It is getting much higher and more competitive,” she said.
Regardless, Carlie Febo said she knows it was the right choice — even beyond the savings.
When they set out on their home search, she and her husband — both freelance artists — wanted to land somewhere where they could be close to the coast; where there was an artistic community; and where they could “afford a house and not really mess up our entire lives with that purchase,” she said. The Providence area checked the boxes.
“We absolutely love it here,” she said.
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