Skyrocketing housing costs in Rhode Island are pushing homeownership out of attain for a lot of potential consumers.
“The post-pandemic shopping for frenzy of 2021 and 2022 severely boosted dwelling costs in Rhode Island because it did in a lot of the nation,” says Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com®. “Stock was traditionally low on this interval, and whereas in different components of the nation it has recovered, the Northeast and Rhode Island stay supply-constrained.”
The median dwelling worth in Rhode Island in February 2019 was $322,500. In February 2026, it was $518,734, and continues to be rising—up 6.5% from February 2025.
“This fast and sustained worth development is outpacing earnings development, stretching skinny the housing budgets of Rhode Islanders,” says Berner.
To deal with these challenges, the state adopted a legislation in June 2024 to make it simpler for owners to construct an adjunct dwelling unit on their present property.
“To deal with Rhode Island’s housing challenges, our statewide housing plan, Housing 2030, prioritizes increasing the availability of houses throughout all housing varieties, together with accent dwelling items,” Rhode Island Secretary of Housing Deborah Goddard tells Realtor.com. “The plan units an bold purpose of allowing 15,000 new housing items by means of the tip of 2030, together with 525 ADUs—practically tripling current manufacturing ranges.”
Berner says ADUs are a viable (if partial) answer to the housing affordability downside.
“Permitting for extra dense housing will improve the stock of houses on the market and put downward stress on costs,” he says. “Consumers, consequently, could have extra choices to select from at costs they will afford extra simply. Within the Northeast particularly, zoning rules are usually fairly restrictive and new development is consequently exhausting to come back by. Something that reinforces the circulate of recent houses onto the market will assist the affordability disaster in Rhode Island.”
Nonetheless, in line with a State of Rhode Island report launched final week, solely 82 ADUs had been truly constructed and issued certificates of occupancy in 2025.
“Though the state has its personal mandate for ADUs, every metropolis and municipality has its personal zoning nuances, so we would prefer to see that extra streamlined,” Mike Pereira, 2026 president of the Rhode Island Affiliation of Realtors®, tells Realtor.com. “There’s mainly plenty of purple tape.”
Goddard says there have been 163 ADU items permitted in 2024, and 262 in 2025.
“Assembly Rhode Island’s housing wants requires a various vary of housing choices—there isn’t any one-size-fits-all answer,” says Goddard. “To make sure communities can accommodate Rhode Islanders at completely different life phases and earnings ranges, Housing 2030 highlights the significance of housing choices, like ADUs, as a key technique for creating extra versatile, attainable houses statewide.”
Pereira emphasizes that ADUs symbolize solely a restricted a part of the answer to Rhode Island’s affordability challenges. “Constructing an ADU is not low-cost, and it is cost-prohibitive for many individuals,” he explains. “Perhaps it helps within the grand scheme of issues, however it would not remedy the issue.”
Rhode Island’s affordability disaster
On the Realtor.com nationwide housing report card‘s grading of every state’s response to the housing disaster, Rhode Island ranked final in housing affordability, scoring an F.
The state combines poor dwelling affordability with insufficient residential development exercise to maintain up with demand. Because the smallest state, Rhode Island additionally suffers from a scarcity of obtainable land to construct on.
All 39 of Rhode Island’s municipalities—31 cities and eight cities—are thought-about unaffordable for the typical resident seeking to buy or lease a house, in line with the 2025 Housing Reality E book launched by HousingWorks RI at Roger Williams College.
Primarily based on 2024 median single-family dwelling values, a family would want near $130,000 in annual earnings to buy a house affordably wherever in Rhode Island, assuming a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage backed by the Federal Housing Administration, together with native property tax and hazard insurance coverage charges.
Nonetheless, the median family earnings in Rhode Island is roughly $86,000.
The affordability divide is most pronounced in New Shoreham—the lone municipality on Block Island, about 12 miles off the mainland—the place researchers discovered that purchasing a house with out monetary pressure would require an annual earnings exceeding $521,000.
The median itemizing worth in Block Island is $3,120,000.
On the different finish of the spectrum, Pawtucket, RI, was probably the most reasonably priced municipality within the state, with a median dwelling worth of $399,900. The HousingWorks RI report discovered {that a} family incomes roughly $128,000 yearly might purchase there with out overextending financially.
The report discovered that 1 in 3 Rhode Island households—about 142,920 in whole—are cost-burdened, which means they spend greater than 30% of their earnings on housing. Of these households, 44% are thought-about severely cost-burdened, devoting a minimum of half their earnings to housing prices.
Which states lead the U.S. with the variety of ADUs?
California is way and away the nationwide chief in ADU development. Knowledge from the permit-tracking platform Shovels exhibits the state accounts for 32% of all ADU permits issued nationwide. In actual fact, ADU permits equal 127% of recent residential development permits within the state—which means extra ADUs are being accredited than conventional houses.
Since 2018, 429,503 ADU permits been issued in California.
The Golden State enacted sweeping statewide ADU reforms that made approvals simpler by stripping away limitations like parking mandates, owner-occupancy guidelines, and excessive impression charges—and allow numbers climbed sharply quickly after.
Florida ranks second nationally with 18% of all ADU permits, with 240,143 being issued since 2018. Rating third is Texas (8%), with 103,140 permits being issued since 2018.
In Florida and Texas, reforms have been extra incremental or city-driven, however related efforts to ease restrictions have helped spur new development in sure markets.
