A second-home buyer scrolling listings sees Atlantic City's median price and assumes they've found the deal of the shore. As of August 2026, homes here were listed at a median of $215,000, a figure that keeps dropping, down roughly 6 percent from a year earlier. Compare that to Longport a few miles south, where the median listing price sits near $2 million, and Atlantic City looks like the last affordable stretch of Absecon Island.
Then that same buyer starts touring blocks. In one part of town they find a pre-1940s rowhouse needing a full rehab for under $200,000. Three blocks away, on the water, a brand-new three-bedroom with a private boat slip and a two-car garage is asking north of $600,000. Same city. Same median price technically covers both. Neither number describes what they're actually looking at.
That gap is the story. Atlantic City's median isn't hiding a bargain. It's blending together at least four housing markets that barely overlap, and the spread between them is what a buyer or investor actually needs to understand before writing an offer.
What The Citywide Number Is Actually Averaging
| Neighborhood | Recent sold median | Typical days on market | Housing character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ducktown | ~$190,000 (past 12 months, sold) | ~99 days | Pre-1940s rowhouses, duplexes, twins |
| Chelsea Heights | ~$270,000 (past 12 months, sold) | ~36 days | Elevated ranches, split-levels, bungalows |
| Venice Park | ~$300,000, down ~5% year over year | Varies, small sample | Rare detached single-family, canal and bay lots |
| New waterfront construction (Chelsea/Lower Chelsea) | Low $600,000s to mid-$800,000s | New-build timelines | Docked bayfront homes, beach-block townhomes |
Look at the days-on-market column first. Chelsea Heights homes are selling in a median of 36 days, according to Homes.com's neighborhood data, less than half the citywide median of 85 days posted this August. Ducktown homes, by contrast, typically sit for about 99 days. Those aren't two data points feeding into one healthy average. They're two different demand curves getting flattened into a single citywide figure that describes the pace of neither market.
Ducktown: Where The Median Gets Pulled Down
Ducktown is the neighborhood doing most of the work of dragging Atlantic City's citywide median toward $215,000. It's a dense, historically Italian district built around rowhouses and twins from the early 20th century, still home to Angelo's Fairmount Tavern and the original White House Sub Shop, both destinations that predate most of the housing stock around them.
Sold prices here have closed at a median near $190,000 over the trailing 12 months, up sharply from the year before, according to Homes.com neighborhood figures. Current listings, which skew toward renovated end units, push the asking median closer to $240,000. That gap between sold and listed prices is itself a signal: Ducktown's inventory is aging faster than it's being replaced, so freshly updated units command a real premium over the neighborhood's historical base.
For an investor, that's the actual read. A rowhouse here is a renovation-and-hold or rental play, not a comp for what "Atlantic City real estate" costs everywhere else.
Chelsea Heights: The Neighborhood That's Actually Fast
A few blocks inland from the bay, Chelsea Heights is a different product entirely. The housing stock runs from the 1900s through the 1960s and includes split-levels, ranches and bungalows, many of them raised on elevated foundations. Vagabond Kitchen & Tap House, known locally for its bay views, sits at the center of the neighborhood's dining scene.
Sold prices have held at a median of about $270,000 over the past year, essentially unchanged from the prior 12 months, per Homes.com. What's changed is speed. That 36-day median sale time isn't a fluke of a small sample. It suggests genuine competition for a specific kind of product: a livable, already-elevated single-family home close to the beach at a price still well under $300,000.
Venice Park: A Small Market That Swings Hard On Its Own Numbers
Venice Park is the one true rarity on this list. It's a pocket surrounded on all sides by canals and the Intracoastal Waterway, built almost entirely of detached single-family homes, ranch, split-level, traditional and newer construction styles, many with direct bay frontage and private docks. Detached homes are genuinely uncommon in most of Atlantic City's denser sections, which is what makes this neighborhood behave differently from its neighbors.
Prices here are down about 5 percent over the past year, according to Homes.com. In a market this thin, with a small number of annual sales, a handful of transactions at either end can swing that percentage more than it would in a larger neighborhood like Ducktown. A single-digit dip in Venice Park says less about softening demand and more about the volatility that comes with a small sample of genuinely unique inventory.
The Tier The Citywide Median Doesn't Even Capture
Then there's the new construction pushing Atlantic City's ceiling upward, product that barely existed here a few years ago. One bayfront listing at 239 N. Arizona Avenue, scheduled for completion around August 1, 2026, offers three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a private two-car garage and a dedicated deep-water boat slip with a new dock and bulkhead, plus a five-year tax abatement and permission for Airbnb and VRBO rentals, a flexibility not every shore condo association allows.
Eric Millstein has tracked this shift as it's happened. Earlier this year, in a KeyCrew feature on South Jersey shore pricing, he pointed to a bayfront project in Chelsea offering three-bedroom homes with deep-water docks in the low $600,000s, and luxury townhomes a block and a half from the beach in the mid-$800,000s, prices he called hard to match anywhere else on the East Coast. He's also watched a parallel trend at the entry level: young families buying duplexes, living in one unit and renting the other to offset the mortgage.
That's three genuinely separate products sitting inside one zip code: a $190,000 rowhouse, a $270,000 elevated bungalow, and a $600,000-plus bayfront new build with a boat slip. Averaging them into one median tells a buyer almost nothing about which one they're actually shopping for.
Why This Spread Is Widening, Not Narrowing
The gap is likely to get wider before it gets smaller, because new supply is arriving disproportionately at the top. Colosseo Atlantic City has approval for 74 four-story townhomes near the former Atlantic Club casino site, each with four bedrooms, rooftop decks and private parking. K. Hovnanian has approval for 152 for-sale townhomes in the South Inlet and broke ground on August 12, 2026, on the Terraces at Absecon Inlet, 38 waterfront townhomes near New Hampshire and Pacific avenues. Developer Keith Groff has started Phase II of Lighthouse Row near the Absecon Lighthouse, following a first phase of eight market-rate townhomes that represented the first new residential construction on that site in roughly two decades. In the Orange Loop, Zoubek Properties, run by former Villanova basketball player Brian Zoubek, has completed the first 10 townhomes at the Residences at the Orange Loop with room to build 19 more. Kushner Companies is also bringing 180 market-rate rental apartments to the city through its Caspian Point project.
Collectively, the New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has tracked more than 425 residential units approved or breaking ground in just the past several months, spread across four Atlantic City neighborhoods. None of that volume is landing in Ducktown's rowhouse stock. It's concentrated in Chelsea, the Inlet and the Orange Loop, precisely the corners where new construction is already pricing well above the citywide median. Every one of those units that closes will pull the top of the market further from the bottom, while the older housing stock that anchors the median stays exactly where it is.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare Numbers
Does a lower price in a neighborhood like Ducktown mean it's a worse long-term bet? Not necessarily. It means a different product. Millstein has pointed to the appreciation these neighborhoods have shown over the past decade as evidence they're holding value, not evidence of distress. A $190,000 rowhouse and a $600,000 bayfront new build are answering different questions for a buyer: one is a renovation-and-rent play, the other is a turnkey second home.
Why did Venice Park dip while Chelsea Heights held steady? Sample size. Venice Park has far fewer annual sales than Chelsea Heights, so a handful of transactions can move its year-over-year percentage more than the same number would move a larger, denser neighborhood. A single year's swing in a thin market tells you less than the same swing would in a bigger one.
If you're comparing Atlantic City to Margate or Ventnor on a single median price, you're comparing an average of averages. The neighborhood is the unit that actually matters, not the zip code. Eric Millstein Properties works these blocks by name, not by citywide statistic. Let's Connect — Get Your Home Valuation and find out what your budget actually buys in the neighborhood you're really considering.
