New Cross is home to young, well-educated renters, and only a small minority own their home. About a third rent privately. Another third rent from the council or a housing association. The typical resident is in their early thirties. Half the adults have a degree, though owning the home they live in is unusual.
Census 2021, the source for every population figure on this page, found about 30% of New Cross households owning their home and about 32% renting privately. Another 35% rent from the council or a housing association, which makes social landlords the biggest landlord in the area, with private landlords a close second.
The typical resident is 33, and about 40% of people are aged between 25 and 44. It is a neighbourhood of people in the middle of their working lives and near the start of their housing ones.
The Office for National Statistics modelled gross household income at about £67,000 a year for the financial year to March 2023, before tax and averaged across the area's eight neighbourhood areas. A figure that is both before tax and a few years old will always look bigger written down than it feels at the end of the month.
About 16% of households are lone parents with children, a larger group than couples with children.
People living alone make up about 30% of households, and single pensioners about 5%, who are counted inside that 30%. Couples with children account for about 13%. Families and solo flat-dwellers live side by side here, with the solo households in the majority.
About 51% of adults hold a degree-level qualification and about 14% have none. Full-time students make up about 5% of residents. Goldsmiths, University of London, stands in the middle of New Cross, yet its student reputation rests on a remarkably small share of the people who actually live here.
About 86% of residents described their health as good or very good at the census. For Lewisham as a whole, the borough-wide rate of deaths from preventable causes is similar to England's, and so is the smoking rate, at about 9% of adults.
As a population New Cross is young and educated, but with ownership this rare and social renting this common it lands a little below the middle.