Esher is mostly well-paid, well-educated homeowners in middle age. More than three in four own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Most adults have a degree. Esher is full of people who have already done the hard part of their careers.
About 77% of Esher's households own their home, and about 16% rent privately, with social renting at about 7%. Renting is a small part of the market here. Most of the town paid a deposit and expects to stay.
The typical resident is 45, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 21% of the population. That age group is the one doing most of the house-hunting elsewhere. Here it's a smaller group than the people who bought ten or twenty years ago and are still in the house.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income in Esher at about £92,600 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the wider surrounding areas. After tax, the equivalent figure is about £59,600. The gap between the two is the difference between what residents earn on paper and what they actually spend, and in Esher the money that pays for the house usually came from a previous house.
Across Esher's households at the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure here, about 30% were couples with dependent children and about 7% were lone parents. Families are the main group, and the school run is the closest thing Esher has to rush hour.
About 22% of households were one person living alone, and about 11% were a pensioner living alone, a group within that 22%. A pensioner living alone in a four-bedroom house is part of Esher too, and probably a familiar sight on most roads.
About 59% of adults have a degree, about 8% have no qualifications and about 1% are full-time students. The population is highly educated without being a student town, since there's no university here. Ada Lovelace is among Esher's notable residents, so the bar was set high early.
Only 99 of Esher's 10,703 residents live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households, too few to change any of the shares above.
The people of Esher are one of its real strengths, a settled, well-off and well-educated population, though most of them got here a while ago.