Bexleyheath is mostly homeowners in early middle age, with good incomes and a broad mix of households. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is just past forty. Incomes are comfortable before tax and still fairly comfortable after it. It is a town of mortgage-payers, with a minority who rent and a smaller one in social housing.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 Census unless a different source is named. About 72% of Bexleyheath's households own their home, about 17% rent privately and about 9% rent from a council or housing association. With fewer than one household in five renting privately, there are not many rental properties to choose from, and a family hoping to rent before they buy may wait some time for the right one to come up.
The typical resident is about 41, and about 28% of people are aged 25 to 44. That is a town built around working age, with a younger group still building careers and a middle-aged group well into theirs.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income across Bexleyheath at about £83,000 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023, and about £53,000 after tax on the same basis. Comfortable before tax, and still comfortable after it, although that 2023 figure predates a few years of rising prices.
The 5,536 households are a real mix. About 22% are couples with children, about 12% are lone parents, and about 27% are one person living alone, with single pensioners making up about 13% of all households within that group. The interwar semis were built for the couple with children, and now only a little over a fifth of households look like that. The others have filled the spare bedrooms in their own ways.
About 33% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree-level qualification, about 17% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are in full-time study. That puts graduates and people who went straight into work on the same streets, with very few students, which is what you would expect from a suburb with no university.
About 84% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across the London Borough of Bexley, deaths from preventable causes run at a rate similar to England as a whole, and about 7% of adults smoke, again similar to England.
Bexleyheath's population is one of its strengths: mostly owners, solidly earning, and mixed in age and household type.