Markyate is mostly homeowners in early middle age, with good jobs and grown-up mortgages. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. Incomes are comfortable, and the village has very few students.
The 2021 census, the source for every population figure here, shows about 71% of households owning their home, about 11% renting privately and about 17% renting from a council or housing association. Private renting is a small corner of the market, and anyone hoping to rent in the village before buying will be choosing from very few homes at any one time.
The typical resident is 42, and about 26% of people are aged 25 to 44. Those are the years of careers, children and mortgages, and the village has a fair share of each, with the rest weighted towards people who arrived at that stage and stayed on through the next one.
The Office for National Statistics models household income here at around £69,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That is a figure built for an area of a few thousand people rather than counted from payslips, and it describes a village of two-income households paying for a house and probably two cars.
Households are a mix. About 29% are one person living alone, and about 10% are a pensioner living alone, a group included within that 29%. Couples with children make up about 24% of households and lone parents about 10%. Behind the two-income headline there is also a fair number of people living on their own in houses that once held a family.
About 39% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 13% have no formal qualifications, and full-time students make up about 2% of residents. That is a broad mix: professionals commuting out, people who left school and did well in a trade, and older residents from before degrees were the norm. A student population this small means term time makes no difference here, and the only end-of-year exodus is the one heading for the airport down the road at Luton.
The people of Markyate are one of its strengths: mostly owners, mostly working, comfortable and steady, with enough variety in age and background to keep it from becoming one type of household.