Editor’s Note: This is not investment advice, and we are not financial advisers.
Suppose real estate is the most significant investment a majority of people make in their lifetime. In that case, it’s best to understand the places in Rhode Island with best potential return on investment.
After working in real estate adjacent roles for over a decade, I had the hypothesis that the best place to buy for a return on investment would be up-and-coming cities. Smaller cities where crime might be high now, but people still move to.
To test my hypothesis, we are going to look at places in Rhode Island that are growing faster than average, but where home prices are below average, and crime rates are higher than average.
In everyday terms, these might be “deals”. The best deal in Rhode Island at the moment according to Saturday Night Science? That would be Hope Valley.
7.0% population growth · -2.0% home price growth
Data | Movers
2.8% population growth · 2.5% home price growth
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
8.1% population growth · 1.1% home price growth
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
5.5% population growth · 4.2% home price growth
Located in
Washington County, Rhode Island
Kingston is a village and a census-designated place in the town of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States, and the site of the main campus of the University of Rhode Island. Much of the village center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Kingston Village Historic District.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.7% population growth · 2.1% home price growth
Located in
Newport County, Rhode Island
Tiverton is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 15,780 at the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
0.1% population growth · 1.0% home price growth
Located in
Providence County, Rhode Island
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-3.4% population growth · 3.3% home price growth
Located in
Providence County, Rhode Island
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-1.7% population growth · -5.9% home price growth
Located in
Newport County, Rhode Island
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
2.3% population growth · 0.2% home price growth
Located in
Providence County, Rhode Island
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
-0.6% population growth · 4.2% home price growth
Located in
Washington County, Rhode Island
Westerly is a town on the southwestern shoreline of Washington County, Rhode Island, United States founded in 1669 by John Babcock. It is a beachfront community on the south shore of the state. The population was 22,787 at the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is Rhode Island’s statewide median.
Rhode Island statewide median: $499,272
On the map
Where Rhode Island’s best buys are
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How do you determine the best places to buy a home in Rhode Island for 2026?
We were in real estate for almost five years and have worked on this site for over a decade. Suffice it to say we’ve put a lot of thought into finding an excellent place to buy a home.
So all that thinking has come to this moment where we get to spell out how we’d approach finding an up-and-coming place to live in Rhode Island. Put differently, the analysis will try to find places in Rhode Island with undervalued homes relative to pent-up demand using Saturday Night Science.
To do that, we looked at the most recent American Community Survey Census data for 2020-2024 and compared it to the previous vintage. Specifically, we used the following criteria:
- Y-o-Y Change In Population (People want to live here)
- Y-o-Y Change In Median Home Prices (People are willing to pay for it)
- Home Prices Relative To The State Average (It’s still kinda cheap)
We want places that are growing, have seen home prices increase in recent years, and are still “cheap” for Rhode Island, with these caveats: home prices had to be within 20% of the state average, home prices increased in the last year, and the city had above 2,000 people.
So of the 34 cities and towns in Rhode Island, only 18 places made it through our initial filters to even be considered.
We then ranked each place from 1 to 18 for the above criteria, with 1 being the best. We averaged the rankings to create a “best place to buy” index, with the place having the lowest index being the best.
Turns out that Hope Valley is the best potential gem in the not-so-rough in the Ocean State.
The full plate
Best Places To Buy A Home In Rhode Island
Click any column to sort. Search by city name.
| Rank | City | Population | Median Home Price | Population Change | Home Price Increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hope Valley | 2,297 | $552,756 | 7.0% | -2.0% |
| 2 | Narragansett Pier | 3,167 | $1,051,534 | 2.8% | 2.5% |
| 3 | Pascoag | 4,410 | $450,851 | 8.1% | 1.1% |
| 4 | Kingston | 7,332 | $683,565 | 5.5% | 4.2% |
| 5 | Tiverton | 8,091 | $546,620 | -0.7% | 2.1% |
| 6 | Cumberland Hill | 8,648 | $487,043 | 0.1% | 1.0% |
| 7 | Greenville | 8,296 | $536,946 | -3.4% | 3.3% |
| 8 | Newport East | 11,069 | $599,571 | -1.7% | -5.9% |
| 9 | Valley Falls | 12,657 | $463,451 | 2.3% | 0.2% |
| 10 | Westerly | 18,411 | $623,538 | -0.6% | 4.2% |
| 11 | Central Falls | 22,701 | $377,289 | 1.0% | 0.4% |
| 12 | Newport | 24,874 | $938,854 | -0.6% | 4.6% |
| 13 | Woonsocket | 43,521 | $380,892 | 1.0% | -0.5% |
| 14 | East Providence | 47,281 | $439,966 | 0.7% | 2.2% |
| 15 | Pawtucket | 75,893 | $391,766 | 0.8% | -0.0% |
| 16 | Warwick | 83,175 | $414,087 | 0.4% | 1.9% |
| 17 | Cranston | 83,250 | $446,694 | 0.7% | 3.1% |
| 18 | Providence | 191,767 | $426,007 | 0.8% | 1.1% |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024 via Saturday Night Science. 18 Rhode Island cities cleared the filters.
Summary
Summary: The Best Places To Purchase A House In Rhode Island for 2026
There’s our analysis of the best places to buy a house in Rhode Island. And, to be clear, we aren’t necessarily saying these places are the best places to live, just that it looks like they might be in a couple of years based on the data.
In fact, every place in the following table meets our criteria, so even though it may not look super long, remember we started off with all 34 places in the state.
The best cities to buy a house in Rhode Island are Hope Valley, Narragansett Pier, Pascoag, Kingston, Tiverton, Cumberland Hill, Greenville, Newport East, Valley Falls, and Westerly.
So if we could rent or buy in these cities, we’d definitely buy.
