🏠 Rhode Island (RI) · 2026 Housing Data

What Salary Do You Need
to Buy a Home in Rhode Island?

$120K+
Salary Needed
$398,000
Median Home Price
$2,809/mo
Total Monthly Cost

The Real Numbers in Rhode Island

The median home price in Rhode Island is $398,000. With a 20% down payment and a 7.0% mortgage rate, your monthly PITI payment comes to $2,809/month — including principal, interest, property taxes (1.63% avg.), and insurance.

To qualify under standard bank underwriting (28% front-end DTI), you need a gross annual income of at least $120,000. Rhode Island's median household income is approximately $72,000/year, giving the state a price-to-income ratio of 5.5×.

At 5.5×, Rhode Island sits near the national average for affordability. Buyers earning the median income are close to qualifying but may need to adjust their target price range.

Median Home Price (Rhode Island)$398,000
20% Down Payment$79,600
3.5% FHA Down Payment$13,930
Monthly P&I Payment$2,118/mo
Property Tax (est. 1.63%/yr)$541/mo
Home Insurance (est.)$150/mo
Total PITI Payment$2,809/mo
Salary Needed (28% DTI)$120K+/year
Price-to-Income Ratio5.5× median income
FRC Market DemandWARM
See if your income qualifies for a home in Rhode Island
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📋 Data Sources: Median home prices from NAR & Zillow Research. Property tax rates from Tax Foundation. Income data from US Census Bureau ACS. Mortgage rates from Freddie Mac PMMS. All data updated 2026. Educational use only — not financial advice. Learn more →
The part no calculator can tell you

Numbers like these tell you what you can afford. They cannot tell you whether a lender will say yes — and that varies more than almost anyone realises. In the complete 2025 federal record, approval rates across the 100 largest FHA lenders ran from 98.2% down to 21.3%. Same program, same year.

And it is not simply who applies where: holding state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value constant, applicant mix explains only a 2.7× range in expected outcomes.

Which lenders approve most → Your metro's lenders → Apply to more than one? →

CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc · rates reflect applicant mix as well as lender practice · historical observation, not a prediction · free, CC BY 4.0.

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