Best Places to Buy Rental Property in Rhode Island (2026)

The top of the Rhode Island list is Warwick at 6.7 percent gross, and it gets there on rent rather than price: $2,400 a month against a $427,000 median closed price, while the cheapest city, West Warwick at $400,000, ranks second. Volume and yield part ways: Providence closes about 133 homes a month, more than any other city here, and ranks eighth on yield at 4.7 percent. For five of these cities the page also shows a confirmed-close median; in Providence, 162 confirmed lease closes carry a median of $2,245 against a $2,200 asking median. The two samples are not paired, so the gap describes the samples, not the same homes.

The ranking

Gross yield here is an asking rental yield screen: twelve times the median asking rent over the median closed price, before taxes, insurance, vacancy, management or repairs. Sales use municipal boundaries. Rental listings use the associated city name and may cover a wider postal area. The ratio therefore compares related, but not perfectly matched, market samples, and a home bought at the median price does not necessarily earn the median rent. Confirmed-close medians appear where at least 30 confirmed lease closes were recorded in the window.

City by city

1. Warwick, 6.7 percent gross

Homes in Warwick closed at a median of $427,000 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,400, a gross yield of 6.7 percent. The Warwick market page carries the monthly figures.

2. West Warwick, 5.7 percent gross

Read West Warwick's $1,900 rent as an apartment figure: 71 percent of its listings are apartments or condos. The numbers: $400,000 median closed price across 212 closings, $1,900 median asking rent across 305 listings, 5.7 percent gross. Houses there closed at about $244 per square foot. The West Warwick market page carries the monthly figures.

3. North Providence, 5.7 percent gross

Read North Providence's $1,962 rent as an apartment figure: 67 percent of its listings are apartments or condos. At $415,000 to buy and $1,962 a month to rent, North Providence yields 5.7 percent gross on 270 tracked closings. Houses there closed at about $258 per square foot. The North Providence market page carries the monthly figures.

4. Coventry, 5.4 percent gross

Coventry's confirmed-close median, $2,200 on 33 closes, sits close to its $2,155 asking median; the samples are separate, so read it as agreement between two medians rather than a validated yield. At $475,000 to buy and $2,155 a month to rent, Coventry yields 5.4 percent gross on 269 tracked closings. See the Coventry page for the property mix and the price band.

5. East Providence, 5.3 percent gross

East Providence also carries a confirmed-close median: 37 confirmed lease closes in the last twelve months have a median of $2,175, 6 percent above the $2,050 asking median. The two samples are not paired, so this describes the samples rather than the same homes. At $460,000 to buy and $2,050 a month to rent, East Providence yields 5.3 percent gross on 170 tracked closings. The East Providence market page carries the monthly figures.

6. Cranston, 5.0 percent gross

Cranston's confirmed-close median, $2,150 on 47 closes, sits close to its $2,100 asking median; the samples are separate, so read it as agreement between two medians rather than a validated yield. The numbers: $500,000 median closed price across 487 closings, $2,100 median asking rent across 488 listings, 5.0 percent gross. The Cranston market page carries the monthly figures.

7. Pawtucket, 5.0 percent gross

In Pawtucket the two samples agree: 57 confirmed lease closes have a median of $1,880, within a few percent of the $1,880 asking median, though the samples are separate rather than paired. Homes in Pawtucket closed at a median of $454,000 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $1,880, a gross yield of 5.0 percent. The Pawtucket market page carries the monthly figures.

8. Providence, 4.7 percent gross

Providence's confirmed-close median, $2,245 on 162 closes, sits close to its $2,200 asking median; the samples are separate, so read it as agreement between two medians rather than a validated yield. Homes in Providence closed at a median of $560,000 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,200, a gross yield of 4.7 percent. Full detail is on the Providence market page.

9. South Kingstown, 4.7 percent gross

South Kingstown clears the rental bar narrowly, with 78 listings behind its $2,612 median, so its 4.7 percent yield deserves a wider margin of error than the bigger samples here. The numbers: $667,500 median closed price across 166 closings, $2,612 median asking rent across 78 listings, 4.7 percent gross. The South Kingstown market page carries the monthly figures.

10. Cumberland, 4.6 percent gross

Cumberland's rental sample is 66 percent apartments and condos while its sales are mostly houses, so the $2,100 asking median understates what a house rents for there. The numbers: $546,000 median closed price across 245 closings, $2,100 median asking rent across 172 listings, 4.6 percent gross. Houses there closed at about $286 per square foot. Full detail is on the Cumberland market page.

How this ranking is built

• •Cities: every Rhode Island city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since October 3, 2025: 10 cities qualify.
• •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $520,000 across 6,729 closings.
• •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
• •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
• •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.

Sources and related pages

• •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated October 4, 2026) and rental listings since October 3, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
• •More Rhode Island rankings: Cheapest cities to buy a house in Rhode Island ranks the same kind of list with each city's price per square foot for houses, realized appreciation and days to contract beside the median, and Cap Rate by City ranks the Rhode Island cities Resideline tracks by gross rental yield. The Rhode Island housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest Rhode Island markets by closings.
• •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.

Prepared with Resideline's research pipeline and reviewed by Jeffrey Batista, Resideline's founder.