Bethel, Delaware.
Typical home $362,598 (-0.7% in a year). Salisbury, MD-DE metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,021 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $2,416 -1%
- $365,014$362,598 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $38,874 +12%
- $323,724$362,598 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Bethel$1,903
- Delaware$2,126
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 31 years.
Typical home values in Bethel, DE fell 0.7% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Bethel, Sussex County, Delaware
Bethel is a town of 239 people in Sussex County. 98% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 2% are rented. Unemployment in Sussex County was 4.5% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Sussex County work in schools and health care, then shops.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Bethel is a very small town on Little Creek, and nearly everyone who lives here owns their home rather than renting. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are hot, with July the warmest. Over a year the town gets a good deal of rain and melted snow.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in professional and business services, and in the building trades. Across Sussex County, some of the largest workplaces are Mountaire Farms of Delaware, Beebe Medical Center and the Indian River School District. Few people work from home, and the typical commute is a drive of some length.
Things to do. Little Creek runs in or beside town, and Trap Pond State Park, a protected area, is a short drive away. Horseys Pond, a reservoir, is also a short drive away. For a longer outing, Salisbury Zoo is a longer drive away.
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- 0%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What people in Sussex County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Sussex County had 96,307 jobs in 2025, 2.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 47° and lows near 29°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 69°. About 50 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Salisbury 2N weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Sussex County
- Mountaire Farms of DelawarePoultry slaughtering, dressing, and packing2,631
- Beebe Medical CenterGeneral hospital2,107FTE
- Mountaire FarmsPoultry slaughtering, dressing, and packing2,090
- Allen HarimPoultry slaughtering, dressing, and packing2,081
- Indian River School DistrictSchool district1,492FTE
- Perdue FoodsPoultry processing1,267
- Cape Henlopen School DistrictSchool district1,156FTE
- Bayhealth Hospital Sussex CampusGeneral hospital861FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 165 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 25,437 people in all across the county; Bethel has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- HurricanesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Coastal floodingRelatively moderate
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Bethel’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Sussex County and the Salisbury, MD-DE metro.
Bethel home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Bethel$362,598
- Delaware$405,061
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Bethel address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Bethel — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.