Ship Bottom, New Jersey.
Typical home $1,551,250 (+14.8% in a year). New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$5,194 (+176%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $200,410 +15%
- $1,350,841$1,551,250 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $494,566 +47%
- $1,056,685$1,551,250 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.
- Ship Bottom$8,142
- New Jersey$3,019
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 9 years.
Typical home values in Ship Bottom, NJ rose 14.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ship Bottom, Ocean County, New Jersey
Ship Bottom is a borough of 1,098 people in Ocean County. 92% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 8% are rented. Unemployment in Ocean County was 4.6% in August 2026, and the county had 1.5% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ship Bottom is a small borough on Long Beach Island, with a population among the smaller of New Jersey's towns. Residents are older than in most of the country, nearly all of them own the homes they live in, and the share living below the poverty line is low. Typical home values run very high, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with some snow each year, while summers are warm.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, shops, and banks, insurance and property. Many people work from home, and the typical commute is a fairly short drive. Across Ocean County, the largest workplaces include the Toms River Regional School District, Community Medical Center and HMH-Ocean University Medical Center. Unemployment across the county has eased over the past year, and the county has added a few more jobs.
Things to do. The beach on Long Beach Island is in or beside town, and Barnegat Lighthouse State Park and the New Jersey Maritime Museum are both a short drive away. The Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, also a short drive off, protects coastal habitat for walking and watching birds. For a longer outing, Island Beach State Park is a longer drive away.
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- 486households
- 61%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 22%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Ocean County had 192,715 jobs in 2025, 1.5% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 41° and lows near 27°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 69°. About 10 inches of snow and 41 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Brant Beach-beach Haven weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Ocean County
- Toms River Regional School DistrictSchool district2,145FTE
- Community Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,986FTE
- HMH -ocean University Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,810FTE
- Brick Township Public School DistrictSchool district1,434FTE
- Jackson Township School DistrictSchool district1,357FTE
- Lakewood Township School DistrictSchool district1,285FTE
- Above and Beyond ABA CorporateOffices of mental health practitioners except physicians1,250
- Southern Ocean Medical CenterGeneral hospital888FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 235 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 31,195 people in all across the county; Ship Bottom has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Coastal floodingVery high
- Strong windVery high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- HurricanesRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ship Bottom’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 Ocean County and the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA metro.
Ship Bottom home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ship Bottom$1,551,250
- New Jersey$575,123
- 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.
- Ship Bottom10
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Ship Bottom address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ship Bottom — 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.