09/22/2026
For years, if somebody asked me where to buy down here, I told them the same thing. Get as close to the water as you can afford. Stretch for it. You will never regret being close to the water.
I do not give that advice anymore.
Not because the water stopped being wonderful. Because since I moved here in 1999, being close to the water and having an easy ordinary week have come apart from each other. Back then the closest house was also the convenient house, because everything here was small and nothing took long. Now the closest house can be the one on the wrong side of the highway in July, a long way from a grocery store you can actually park at.
So what I tell people now is close to the opposite. Solve for your ordinary week first. The drive to the store, the drive to care, the drive to whoever you actually want to see. Then get as close to the water as that allows.
Some other things that changed while I was standing here. Sussex County had roughly 157,000 people in 2000 and roughly 263,000 by 2023. The towns no longer close down after Labor Day the way they did, though they are still quieter than most people expect. And Beebe went from one hospital in Lewes to a system with a campus on the Rehoboth side, which moved the map for anybody who cares about that drive.
I am not going to tell you it was better then. It was not. It was quieter and smaller and a lot of it was shut in February.
If you want the version for your own town, send me two things. The year of the last real stretch of time you spent down here, and the town you have in your head.
Most people planning a move to the Delaware beaches are working off...
