Holloway is young, highly educated and mostly renting, and very few people here own their home. About a quarter own. The typical resident is in their early thirties. More than half hold a degree. Social tenants outnumber private renters, so the graduate flat-sharer and the long-standing council tenant often live on the same staircase.
Of Holloway's households, about 25% own their home and about 32% rent privately, and social renting is the largest group of all. The 2021 census, the source for every population figure here, counted 57,718 residents. Holloway has two big renting groups living side by side, and both of them outnumber the owners.
The typical resident is 33, and about 42% of residents are aged 25 to 44. Holloway is young enough to go out and old enough to resent the noise when the neighbours do.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income in Holloway at about £72,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. It is a modelled average across the area, out of date by a few years and calculated before tax, so it describes the neighbourhood rather than any one household's pay. A buyer reading it as a sign of local spending power should remember that much of that income goes on rent.
Households here are small. About 36% are one person living alone, and that includes the 8% who are pensioners living alone. Couples with children make up about 11% of households, and lone-parent households about 14%. Family homes are not what most of Holloway's flats were built for, and the census figures reflect that.
About 54% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 15% have no qualifications at all, and about 4% are full-time students. Both ends of the scale live within a few streets of each other in Holloway. London Metropolitan University is on the doorstep, so the student share comes as no surprise.
Self-reported health is good: about 83% of Holloway residents describe it as good or very good. Islington's rate of deaths from preventable causes is worse than England's, while its smoking rate is similar to England's. Both of those are borough-wide figures set against an England benchmark, so they describe the whole of Islington rather than Holloway's own streets.
About 1,880 residents live outside private households, in student halls, care homes and similar buildings. That is a real presence in a place this size. It pulls the age figure younger at one end and adds to the pensioner count at the other, so the averages already include them. Until 2016 the best-known communal building in Holloway was the women's prison, and its residents never had any say in where they lived.
Holloway's population is a middling mix: well qualified and young, mostly renting, with fewer owners than almost anywhere a buyer is likely to compare it with. Buying here makes you part of the area's owning minority.