Blades, Delaware.
Typical home $244,140 (-3.8% in a year). Salisbury, MD-DE metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$516 (+67%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $9,633 -4%
- $253,773$244,140 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $21,709 -8%
- $265,849$244,140 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.
- Blades$1,281
- Delaware$2,126
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Blades, DE fell 3.8% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Blades, Sussex County, Delaware
Blades is a town of 1,179 people in Sussex County. Half its households earn more than $56,875 a year and half less, against $81,497 across Sussex County; 13% of its people live below the poverty line. 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 residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Blades is a small town in Sussex County, Delaware, with household incomes below the county's and a smaller share of adults holding a four-year degree than is typical. Winters are cold and summers are warm, with some snow most years and plenty of rain across the seasons. Deep Creek and Tubbs Branch run in or beside town, so water is part of the local landscape.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in manufacturing, and in professional and business services. Across Sussex County, some of the biggest workplaces are Beebe Medical Center, the Indian River School District and Mountaire Farms of Delaware. Very few people work from home, and the typical commute is a moderate one.
Things to do. Trap Pond State Park is a protected area a longer drive away, and it is the best known of the places nearby. Horseys Pond, a reservoir, is a short drive away, and so is Baker Mill Branch, a small river. Deep Creek runs in or beside town itself.
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- 372households
- 9%of adults have a degree
- 13%below the poverty line
- 25 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What residents 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 44° and lows near 25°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 67°. About 13 inches of snow and 46 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Greenwood 2NE weather station, 13 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; Blades 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
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Coastal floodingRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- HurricanesRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Blades’ census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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.
Blades home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Blades$244,140
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Blades7
Zip codes with a Blades address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Blades — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.