About 1,370 year-round residents — and that number is the least important fact about Rehoboth, because the census also shows 74 percent of housing units vacant: this is a town of second homes and vacation rentals that swells past 25,000 in summer. The year-round town and the summer town are two different places sharing one boardwalk, and the year-round version is one of the oldest and wealthiest small communities in Delaware: median age 62.9, with 43.6 percent of residents 65 or older, median household income of $137,500, and per-capita income around $93,000 — among the highest of any small town in the state.

The property numbers explain who can afford the zip code: median value reached $1.49 million in 2024, up 20 percent in a single year, with homeownership at 80.8 percent among the occupied homes. The median home was built in 1975 and nearly 20 percent of the stock predates 1940 — this is an old town by beach standards, which is a large part of its charm and most of its maintenance bill.

The history explains the shape of it. Rehoboth began in 1873 as a Methodist camp-meeting ground — the name is biblical, "room for all" — and the street grid between the Avenue and the ocean still follows the camp's original plan. The railroad arrived, then the highway, and a church campground became the Nation's Summer Capital, the nickname earned from generations of Washingtonians summering here; you'll still meet more D.C. license plates on the Avenue in July than Delaware ones. That Washington connection never left — it's a big part of who retires here now, and why the town's politics, restaurants, and real-estate prices all read more capital-region than lower-slower Delaware.

Professional, scientific, and technical services is the most common employment sector among residents — retired executives, relocated professionals, and remote workers who brought their salaries to the beach — followed by accommodation and food services and healthcare. ZIP 19971 as a whole supports roughly 970 business establishments employing about 11,000 people with an annual payroll near $478 million: the engine room of Sussex County's tourism economy, run in large part by people who live a town or two inland and work here. The town Rehoboth most resembles in the census isn't another beach resort — it's a wealthy retirement village that happens to own the state's most valuable mile of boardwalk.
The rhythm of the year defines life here more than in any inland town. Summer is the fourteen-week engine — traffic, crowds, and every business running flat out. Then the switch flips: fall brings the Sea Witch crowds and the film festival, winter belongs to the 1,370 who stay, and spring is six weeks of the whole town painting, planting, and washing before Memorial Day. Weather does all four seasons properly — real winter, nor'easters included, and the occasional coastal storm that reminds everyone why the dunes matter. The 1962 storm that rebuilt the town's oceanfront is still the local benchmark, and beach replenishment is a recurring civic event rather than a one-time fix.

Healthcare runs through Beebe — the main hospital campus ten minutes north in Lewes, with walk-in and specialty care along the Route 1 corridor — which matters in a town where nearly half the year-round residents are past 65. Community life punches far above the population: the library on the Avenue dates to 1913, Clear Space Theatre stages a professional season year-round, the film society screens through the winter, and CAMP Rehoboth's community center anchors one of the most established LGBTQ+ communities on the East Coast — a defining part of the town's modern identity and a real driver of its year-round economy and culture.
Cost of living is the honest asterisk on all of it. Delaware has no sales tax and famously low property taxes — a big part of the retirement math that fills this town — but the housing number is the gate: a $1.49 million median means year-round Rehoboth is largely a town of people who bought decades ago, bought with equity from somewhere more expensive, or rent in the surrounding zip code and work in town. The workforce that runs the restaurants and shops mostly lives inland — Lewes, Milton, Millsboro, Georgetown — and commutes down Route 1, which is its own seasonal adventure. That inland ring is also where the young families priced out of the ocean blocks actually land, keeping Cape Henlopen's schools full even as the town proper skews past sixty. It's a structure every resort town knows: the place gets older and wealthier at the core while the working ring around it gets younger — and understanding that ring is understanding half of Sussex County's growth story, Millsboro included.
Ask anyone who stayed past their first winter: the town the tourists never meet is the one residents were actually buying.