RI's housing market is booming like never before

Good morning, I'm Will Richmond at The Providence Journal and this is the Daily Briefing.

If you have friends or family trying to buy a house in Rhode Island recently there's a good chance your jaw dropped hearing their stories.

Bids tens of thousands over asking price – if not more – being rejected. In my neighborhood, we just saw a rundown, vacant home sold for over a hundred thousand more than the listing price.

It's enough to make first-time homebuyers shake their heads, if not worse.

As The Journal's Wheeler Cowperthwaite reports the price of a single-family home in Rhode Island has nearly doubled since 2019, with the median price of a single family home now just short of a half-million dollars.

What's driving the climbing costs and is there any hope in sight?

Here's what Wheeler found.

• We all know Rhode Islanders aren't afraid to harvest their own quahogs, but what about mussels?

They're on menus throughout the state, but you'd be hard-pressed to find many of them in the state's waters.

Journal reporter Antonia Farzan explains the difference between the more popular blue mussels and the ribbed mussels you're more likely to find in the Ocean State , along with some of the reasons why the latter is much more prevalent in Rhode Island, and also considered less desirable to eat.

• Are you headed to the Newport Folk Festival this weekend?

Here's a look at everything you need to know before you go from alternative ways to get there, what you can bring with you and even some guesses at possible surprise performances.

• More than 20,000 people were impacted by a data breach at the Wyatt Detention Facility and personal information, including Social Security numbers, was stolen and posted to the dark web. The Journal's Katie Mulvaney reports that now a class action lawsuit has been filed.

• Trolls, elephants and now birds. Journal photographer Kris Craig gets a look at the latest public art display to land in Rhode Island.

More from The Providence Journal

Find the latest obituaries here.

Subscribers can read the eNewspaper here.

WORTH A READ

📰 Biden's farewell: Leaving to Kamala Harris the race he wanted to run

🌋 A baffling, dangerous explosion in Yellowstone : What is a hydrothermal explosion?

👰 'Really a stealth operation': Mariah Kennedy Cuomo marries Tellef Lundevall in Hyannisport

RHODY RANKS

Every day we receive emails ranking Rhode Island. While the work behind the ranks may be dubious, they can be fun. Each day I'll share where Rhody Ranks from one of the latest emails.

New research has revealed which card games Rhode Island finds most confusing, with Poker taking the top spot.

Multiplayer card game site World of Card Games analyzed the average number of monthly Google searches for terms related to different card games such as ‘how to play Blackjack’ and ‘Baccarat rules explained’ to determine which ones Rhode Island finds most confusing.

TODAY'S WEATHER

🌩️ Warmer; a shower in the morning followed by a thunderstorm in spots in the afternoon; storms can bring flooding downpours and localized damaging wind gusts. Highs in the low 80s.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI's housing market is booming like never before