Owners, mostly, and not many of them are young. About seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is past fifty. Under one household in five is a couple with children living at home. Lostwithiel is a town people arrive at rather than grow up in, and the age profile gives that away before anyone opens their mouth.
The tenure split, from the 2021 Census that underpins every population figure here, runs 72% owning, 19% renting privately and 8% renting from a social landlord. That is a settled town rather than a churning one, and it has consequences beyond the doorstep: in a place with old housing stock and high ownership, the houses that come up for sale come up slowly, and mostly when somebody's circumstances change rather than when the market invites it.
The median age is 53, and only 19% of residents are aged between 25 and 44. That missing cohort is the one that fills nurseries, sports clubs and the seats at the back of the pub on a Thursday, and its absence is the single most defining thing about the place. Nobody planned it. It is what happens when a small, expensive, beautiful town sits an hour from most of the jobs.
Household income averaged £41,590 gross, before tax, on the modelled figures for the financial year to March 2023, which works out at around £33,940 after tax. Those describe a period now some years behind us rather than the present day, and they are the middle of a range rather than a typical salary.
Household shapes follow the age profile. 31% of households are one person living alone, and 17% are a pensioner living alone, that second figure being a slice of the first rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children make up 15% of households and lone parents 6%. Roughly a third of the front doors in this town open onto one person's life, which is worth knowing whether you are hoping for neighbourly quiet or dreading it.
On qualifications, 38% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, 14% hold none at all, and 2% are full-time students. That is a wide spread rather than a uniform one, and the students being that thin on the ground is simply what happens when the nearest university is somebody else's commute.
Health reads reasonably. 81% of residents describe their health as good or very good, while 6% describe it as bad or very bad. Widening out to Cornwall as a whole, since the health benchmarks are published at local-authority level rather than for the town, adult smoking sits at around 12% and is rated similar to the England average, and the local authority's preventable mortality rate is also rated similar to England. Neither of those is a statement about the people on any particular street.
For completeness, 58 residents live in communal establishments rather than private households, a number small enough that the household shares above describe very nearly everyone here.
On the measures that make up this part of the picture, the town sits below the national middle rather than above it, and the demographic profile is one of the weaker parts of its case. What you get is a stable, older, largely owner-occupied town with modest incomes and few young families, which is either exactly what you came for or the thing that will quietly wear you down by the second winter.