Owner-occupiers, and a surprising number of them on their own. The median resident is fifty. A third of households contain one person. Ownership runs at seven in ten. Nobody here is passing through: this is a town people arrive at, stop in, and then stay in for a very long time.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census. On tenure, 70% of households own their home outright or with a mortgage, 19% rent privately and 11% rent from a social landlord. That ownership level is the single most defining number about the place, because owners move less often than renters do, and a town of owners changes slowly whatever the estate agent windows suggest.
The age profile follows from that. The median resident is fifty, and only 20% of the population falls in the twenty-five to forty-four band, which is the group most places rely on for their noise, their nurseries and their nightlife. Exmouth has all three, generated by a thinner slice of people than a town this size usually manages.
Household income was modelled at about £53,000 gross for the financial year to March 2023. That is a household total before tax rather than a salary, and it describes a year that has now passed rather than the present one, so treat it as the shape of local earning rather than what anyone currently banks.
Households here are small more often than they are large. Single-person households make up 32%, of which 18% of all households are pensioners living alone, so that second figure sits inside the first rather than alongside it. Couples with dependent children account for 16% and lone-parent households for 9%. Put together, the town runs on one and two person households far more than on the family-of-four the housing stock was mostly built for.
On qualifications, 30% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, 17% hold none at all, and 1% are full-time students. That is a wide spread rather than a concentration at either end, and it describes a working town with a professional layer rather than a commuter dormitory or a university satellite. The absence of students is worth noting for anyone who has ever lived somewhere that empties in July.
Of the 35,783 people counted here, 492 live in communal establishments such as care homes rather than private households. Small enough not to move any of the shares above, large enough to mention once so nobody assumes the household figures cover everybody.
The population profile is ordinary in the most useful sense. Older than average, heavily settled, quietly comfortable, with enough working-age households and enough people living alone to keep the town from becoming any one thing.