Haslemere is lived in by people who've finished proving themselves and want the garden to show it. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Half hold a degree. Settled is the polite word for it. Smug is the word used by people who got outbid.
Every population figure on this page comes from the 2021 census unless it says otherwise. About 71% of households own their home, which makes owning the default and renting the exception. About 16% rent privately and about 13% rent from a council or housing association. So the town isn't all owners, whatever the view from the high street suggests, but the renters are the minority in a place built around the mortgage and, increasingly, the paid-off mortgage.
The median resident is 46. Adults aged 25 to 44, the years when most people are buying first homes and raising small children, make up about 21% of the population. That leaves the balance tilted towards the later chapters: people with teenagers, people whose teenagers have left, and people who have settled into the quiet for good. Haslemere isn't where careers start. It's where they end up.
Average household income, before tax, was about £72,600 in the financial year to March 2023, as modelled by the Office for National Statistics for the neighbourhoods here. That's a gross, modelled figure for a year that's now behind us, not a salary survey of today. It's still enough to explain the cars on the drives.
The household mix is mostly families and couples. About 25% of households are couples with children and about 8% are lone-parent households. About 28% of households are one person living alone, and within that group about 14% of all households are single pensioners. That single-pensioner share is part of the one-person figure, not added to it. A town with this many people living on their own in houses built for families has a lot of spare bedrooms, and a fair few of them are being used as offices.
The qualifications mix leans heavily academic. About 49% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree-level qualification, while about 12% have no formal qualifications at all. Full-time students make up about 1% of residents, which tells you nobody moves here for the nightlife. The young leave for university and come back, if they come back, with a partner, a deposit and opinions about school catchments.
About 601 people live in communal settings rather than private households, such as care homes; the area has 8 care homes of its own. That's large enough to register, and it helps explain the single-pensioner share, but not large enough to change how the other figures read.
The people are Haslemere's real strength: settled, well qualified and comfortably off, with the stability that comes from people who arrived meaning to stay. What it lacks is young adults, and the house prices are why.