Owner-occupiers, mostly, and very few of them are passing through. About three-quarters own their homes. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Nearly three in ten households are one person on their own. This is a town of people who arrived, unpacked, and stopped looking at property listings.
On the 2021 Census, which is the source for every population figure on this page, about 73% of households own their home, about 14% rent privately and about 11% rent socially. That is a town built around ownership, with a small private rental sector attached to the side of it. Anyone planning to rent here first and buy later is competing for a thin slice of the housing stock, and the waiting is likely to be longer than the searching.
The median age is 45, with about 23% of residents aged between 25 and 44. Neither number describes a retirement town, but neither describes a place people move to in their twenties to start something. The demographic centre of gravity here is somewhere around a second mortgage and a first extension.
Household income for this area was modelled at about £56,300 gross, before tax, in the financial year to March 2023, which works out at roughly £41,400 once tax comes off. That figure describes that year rather than today, and it describes the middle of the distribution rather than anybody's actual pay slip. It is comfortable money for Devon without being the kind that makes the neighbours curious.
The household make-up splits about as evenly as it gets. Around 29% of households are one person living alone, and about 16% of all households are pensioners living alone, which sits inside that first figure rather than beside it. Couples with children account for about 21% and lone parent households about 9%. So the school-run population and the living-alone population are close to the same size, which is why the town feels busy at nine in the morning and quiet by mid-afternoon.
On qualifications, about 38% of adults hold a degree-level qualification and about 13% hold none, with full-time students at about 2%. That mix describes a town with plenty of professionals in it and plenty of people who never needed a certificate to be good at their job. The student figure confirms what everybody already suspects: nobody is doing their university years here.
Taken together the profile is steady rather than striking. Comfortable, settled, weighted towards people in the middle of their working lives and people at the end of them, with the sharp edges of both wealth and hardship largely absent from the numbers.