Cheam is lived in by homeowners in their forties who don't plan on leaving. Nearly eight in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. About a quarter of households are couples bringing up children. Hardly anyone is a student. The suburb is in the middle of its school-run years and in no hurry to move on from them.
About 78% of Cheam's households own their home, and about 17% rent from a private landlord. Social renting accounts for most of the rest, at about 5%. Renting is the side door into Cheam, and most people came in through the front.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 Census. The median age in Cheam was 41, and about 26% of residents were aged 25 to 44. Forty-one is about the age people stop telling friends they'll move back to central London one day.
Household income in Cheam averaged about £83,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, modelled by the Office for National Statistics across the area's neighbourhoods. That is a comfortable gross figure. It shrinks after tax and then shrinks again after the mortgage.
About 26% of Cheam's households are couples with dependent children, and about 10% are lone parents with children. About 24% are one person living alone, and that includes the 13% of households who are a single pensioner. Cheam covers both ends of family life, the house with the trampoline on the lawn and the house where the children left years ago and the bedrooms are still theirs.
About 36% of residents hold a degree or equivalent, about 15% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. Cheam's students are mostly the ones still in school uniform.
About 86% of Cheam's residents described their health as good or very good in 2021, and about 3% as bad or very bad. Across the borough of Sutton, deaths from preventable causes are lower than the England average, and the smoking rate of about 9% is similar to the national figure. Those are borough-wide measures and cover all of Sutton, not only Cheam.
Cheam's people are one of its real strengths. They own their homes, earn well and are mostly healthy. Most of them have no reason to leave, and most of them haven't.