Mostly settled homeowners who are past the school-run years, and the town is arranged around them. Seven in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-fifties. More than a fifth of households are a pensioner living alone. Bexhill is a town people choose on purpose, usually second time round.
Ownership runs the place. About 71% of households own their home, about 19% rent privately and about 9% rent from a council or housing association. Landlords are a minority interest here, which makes the rental market thinner and the streets steadier than in most seaside towns.
The typical resident is 54, and only about 18% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That age group exists in Bexhill; it is just outnumbered on every pavement by people who have already paid off the mortgage. Anyone arriving in their thirties should expect to be the youngest person at most residents' meetings, and the most asked to carry the chairs.
Modelled household income averaged about £46,500 a year before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That is a gross figure for the households already here, dated by three years, and a fair chunk of the town's wealth sits in paid-off property rather than in payslips.
The household make-up comes from the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page. About 37% of households are one person living alone, and within that about 22% of all households are a single pensioner on their own. Couples with children make up about 11% of households and lone parents about 10%. Families with kids are a minority here, not a rarity, and the schools and parks are not fighting over them the way they do in commuter towns.
On qualifications, about 27% of residents hold a degree and about 21% hold no formal qualifications, which reflects a population that spans people who finished school decades before university became the default. Full-time students account for about 1%, so nobody moves here for the student bars and nobody pretends to.
A further 898 residents live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households. That is too small to change the shares above, but it fits a town where care homes are a familiar part of the street scene.
The people of Bexhill-on-Sea make it a middling, settled sort of place: comfortable, owner-occupied and older than average, without being either wealthy or struggling. Younger buyers will fit in fine, provided they are content to be the exception rather than the crowd.