An East Providence home set a record-high sales price for the city – The Boston Globe

The seven-figure price tag is the highest on record for a residential property in the city, according to Kerry Park, a senior vice president at the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, citing digital records dating back to 1988 available through the State-Wide Multiple Listing Service.

Notably, those records do not include private, off-market sales, according to Park.

Reynolds, however, wasn’t exactly surprised the listing fetched such a substantial figure given the “potential that the property has,” she said.

“It’s in such an amazing site, and waterfront properties in Rhode Island are very, very rare to find where it’s dry [and] you’re not in a really challenging flood zone,” Reynolds said.

She added: “For what it offers, you couldn’t touch that in Newport or Portsmouth or Narragansett. It just would be unheard of.”

The 3,144-square-foot property last sold in 2019 for $605,000 and now has a total assessed value of $804,500, city records show.

Reynolds said the seller invested heavily in the home since then, to address “extensive structural work.”

The eye-catching sales price is far above most homes in East Providence, where the median household income is $71,736, according to 2020 US Census data.

The median sales price for residential properties in the city is approximately $417,000, according to Realtor.com.

But there are pockets of East Providence where homes have sold for more than $1 million this summer, Reynolds said.

“I think there are sections of East Providence that are fabulous for first-time buyers or for people looking to downsize,” she said. “But there’s also a lot of people from the East Side of Providence and from other communities [who] are finding that they can buy a tremendous house with lower taxes and at a better price than maybe some of what the other communities are able to offer.”

Across the Ocean State, the housing market remains tight: In June the median price of a single-family home hit $494,000, a new record, as sales dropped by more than 19 percent, the Rhode Island Association of Realtors reported last month.

The Riverside Drive residence has what Reynolds described as a unique layout: The primary house dates back to 1920 and boasts three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, records available through the city’s assessor’s office show.

An attached “cottage” with a separate entrance was added sometime later and houses two bedrooms and a bathroom, Reynolds said. The residence includes access to a private beach and was listed as both a single-family and a multi-family home, though it has been used primarily as the former for the past two decades, Reynolds said.

Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.