Best Places to Buy Rental Property in Delaware (2026)

Resideline currently has enough sales and rental data to compare Wilmington, Millsboro, Middletown, Dover and Newark. This is a comparison of five covered markets, not a comprehensive ranking of Delaware. Gross asking rental yields run from 7.6 percent in Newark to 9.9 percent in Wilmington. One caution on the rent side: in Middletown houses asked a median of $3,400 while the all-type median was $2,800. For a house, compare house rents with house sale prices; substituting the house rent into a ratio whose denominator is a mixed sale median only makes the number look better, not more representative. For one of these cities the page also shows a confirmed-close median; in Millsboro, 38 confirmed lease closes carry a median of $1,925 against a $2,200 asking median. The two samples are not paired, so the gap describes the samples, not the same homes. Measured against the whole state, these are cheap markets: a median of $330,000 here against $390,000 statewide. A second table lists one city with enough closings to price but too few rental listings to rank.

The ranking

Gross yield here is an asking rental yield screen: twelve times the median asking rent over the median closed price, before taxes, insurance, vacancy, management or repairs. Sales use municipal boundaries. Rental listings use the associated city name and may cover a wider postal area. The ratio therefore compares related, but not perfectly matched, market samples, and a home bought at the median price does not necessarily earn the median rent. Confirmed-close medians appear where at least 30 confirmed lease closes were recorded in the window.

City by city

1. Wilmington, 9.9 percent gross

The numbers: $224,950 median closed price across 584 closings, $1,850 median asking rent across 1,424 listings, 9.9 percent gross. Full detail is on the Wilmington market page.

2. Millsboro, 8.0 percent gross

Millsboro is one of the cities with a confirmed-close sample: 38 closes with a median of $1,925 beside a $2,200 asking median, a 12 percent difference between two separate samples, not a measured gap on the same listings. At $330,000 to buy and $2,200 a month to rent, Millsboro yields 8.0 percent gross on 291 tracked closings. Full detail is on the Millsboro market page.

3. Middletown, 8.0 percent gross

The numbers: $420,000 median closed price across 277 closings, $2,800 median asking rent across 252 listings, 8.0 percent gross. Full detail is on the Middletown market page.

4. Dover, 7.9 percent gross

Homes in Dover closed at a median of $295,000 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $1,950, a gross yield of 7.9 percent. See the Dover page for the property mix and the price band.

5. Newark, 7.6 percent gross

Homes in Newark closed at a median of $377,500 over the last twelve months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,400, a gross yield of 7.6 percent. Houses there closed at about $202 per square foot. The Newark market page carries the monthly figures.

Priced, but too few rentals to rank

These cities cleared 100 tracked closings but fewer than 50 rental listings carried their name in the last twelve months, so no yield is printed for them.

How this ranking is built

• •Cities: every Delaware city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since September 10, 2025: 5 cities qualify.
• •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $390,000 across 8,600 closings.
• •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
• •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
• •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.

Sources and related pages

• •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated September 10, 2026) and rental listings since September 10, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
• •More Delaware rankings: Cheapest cities to buy a house in Delaware ranks the same kind of list with each city's price per square foot for houses, realized appreciation and days to contract beside the median, and Cap Rate by City ranks the Delaware cities Resideline tracks by gross rental yield. The Delaware housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest Delaware markets by closings.
• •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.

Prepared with Resideline's research pipeline and reviewed by Jeffrey Batista, Resideline's founder.