In this episode, we are pulling back the curtain on the April 2026 Rhode Island housing market to explore the stark contradiction shaping our local real estate landscape. On the surface, the data presents a baffling paradox: the median price for a single-family home has shattered records to hit $529,000 (a steep 10.2% jump from last year), yet the actual number of closed sales has plummeted by 6.9%. We’ll dive deep behind these numbers to explain why fewer homes are changing hands even as prices skyrocket. The culprit? A critical inventory starvation diet. Rhode Island is currently locked into a hyper-tight 2-month supply of homes—roughly half the national average—driven by the "golden handcuffs" effect, where current homeowners refuse to give up their historically low mortgage rates.

We will unpack how thi ...