Old Sarum is lived in by working-age households with children, jobs and a mortgage, which is what a new estate is built to hold. The typical resident is in their early thirties. About half own, four in ten rent. A third of households are a couple with children. Nobody retires to Old Sarum, they arrive with a pushchair and a van.
On tenure, the 2021 Census put owner-occupation at about 51%, with about 17% renting privately and about 23% renting from a social landlord. That last share tends to surprise people who judge an estate by how new the brickwork looks, and it is a plain feature of the place rather than a footnote to it.
The age profile follows from the housing. The median age is 33, and about 36% of residents fall between 25 and 44. Places skew this young only when the houses are recent and the schools are close.
Household income for the area was modelled at about £69,700 gross, before tax, for the financial year to March 2023, or about £47,800 once tax comes off. Both figures describe that year rather than this one, and both are averages modelled across the area rather than a number anyone recognises from their own payslip.
Children are the organising fact of local life here. About 32% of households are a couple with children, and about 13% are lone-parent households. That is a lot of school runs converging on the same few roads at the same time each morning.
At the other end, about 22% of households are one person living alone, and single pensioners make up about 5%. The second of those sits inside the first rather than alongside it, so adding them together would double-count. Every population share on this page comes from the 2021 Census.
For qualifications, about 40% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 9% hold none, and about 2% are full-time students. A mixed group rather than a graduate colony, and worth stating without drawing any further conclusions from it.
Health reads well. About 88% of residents report good or very good health and about 3% report bad or very bad. The comparative measures exist only at council level: across Wiltshire, smoking prevalence of about 8% is rated similar to England, and preventable mortality is rated better than England. Those describe the county rather than this set of streets.
One technical note on the counts. Of the 4,802 people recorded here, 76 live in communal establishments rather than private households, which is small enough to leave all the household shares reading exactly as they appear.
Middling on the broad social measures and thoroughly unremarkable in the way most buyers actually want: young households, in work, solvent, with a mix of tenures rather than one street repeated four hundred times. Nobody here is performing, which for a lot of people is the whole appeal.