Dorking is lived in by people who have mostly finished climbing the ladder. Two in three own their homes. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Well over a third have a degree. Students barely register. It's a town for people who've stopped moving house and started doing up the one they bought.
Every figure on this page comes from the 2021 Census unless it says otherwise. About 66% of households own their home, outright or with a mortgage. About 17% rent privately and about 16% rent from a council or housing association, so the rented third splits almost evenly between the two. That social-rented share is higher than the town's reputation suggests, and it's the part of Dorking the estate agents' window never mentions.
The median age is 45. Only about 24% of residents are aged 25 to 44, the years when people are building careers and starting families. Dorking isn't old, but it isn't where people come to start out. Most arrive with a deposit that took somewhere else to earn.
Money isn't the problem. Modelled gross household income, before tax, averaged about £71,000 across the area in the financial year to March 2023. That's the figure for three years ago, not today, and it's a household total, not a salary, so two earners in a semi account for much of it.
The households are an even mix of small and settled. About 34% are one person living alone, and about 16% are a single pensioner living alone, a group that sits inside that one-person figure rather than on top of it. About 20% are couples with dependent children, and about 9% are lone-parent families. That's a town where the family house down the road is often home to one retired owner, which is part of why buyers with children find the three-beds so hard to come by.
On qualifications, about 44% of residents hold a degree or equivalent, and about 13% have no formal qualifications at all. Full-time students make up about 1%. There's no university crowd, no student lets and no rush for the late-night kebab, and nobody in Dorking is sad about that.
A small number of people, 238, live in communal establishments such as care homes instead of private households. At that size they don't shift any of the shares above.
Dorking's population is one of its strengths: settled, well qualified and comfortably off, with enough renters and single households in the mix that it doesn't read as one long queue for the same school.