Eastbourne is older than England, but barely. The median age is 46. About six in ten households own their home. Roughly a third of households are single people. Median household income lands at around £50,000. The town reads as pensioner-territory in the marketing and does not quite hold that up in the actual data.
The tenure picture is solid owner-occupier with a meaningful private rental layer underneath. About 62% of households own, with mortgages and outright ownership combined. Around a quarter of households rent privately, which is a higher share than the south-coast retirement-town stereotype admits. Another one in eight rent socially through housing-association or local-authority tenancies. The owner-occupier majority gives the town its character; the renter quarter keeps it from setting in stone. Anyone expecting a town where nobody is renting and everybody is sitting on a paid-off mortgage will be surprised at how live the lettings market still is.
The age profile lands at a median of 46, which is older than the England median by a few years but a long way from the kind of retirement town the marketing pictures suggest. About 22% of residents fall in the prime working-age band of 25 to 44, which is the bracket that keeps coffee shops open and primary schools running. The working population is real. The retirement population is also real. The two coexist in a way that produces a town that runs on actual commerce rather than purely on pensions.
Median household income lands at around £50,000, which places Eastbourne in the comfortable middle of the South East rather than at either extreme. That is not wealthy by Surrey commuter-belt standards and not poor by coastal-resort standards. It is the kind of income that supports a typical mortgage, a typical car or two, and a typical south-coast life without strain. The town's average score on the index of multiple deprivation sits at decile 5.8, which is bang-on the national middle. The streetscape carries this honestly: neat terraces, busy high streets, and an economy that does not depend on a single employer or a single industry.
The household make-up is where the town's character actually shows. About 35% of households are single people living alone. Around 18% are single pensioner households. Roughly 16% are couples with dependent children, and around 10% are lone-parent households. The single-person share is the headline; that is a high count for a residential town of this size, and it shapes everything from the size of the typical kitchen to the design of the typical Saturday-night high street. Some of that is widows and widowers in the older Victorian streets and the post-war flats by the seafront. Some of it is younger professionals priced out of Brighton who decided that a one-bed flat a short walk from the sea was a fair deal.
Eastbourne scores three out of five on the lived-character dimension, which is the right reading for a town of solid owner-occupiers, a meaningful private rental layer, a median age older than England by a few years, and an income profile that is neither stretched nor flush. It is the comfortable middle of the south coast, populated by the comfortable middle of the south coast.