Port Isaac is lived in mostly by people who arrived at the settled end of life rather than the starting end. Homes here are overwhelmingly owned by the people in them. The typical resident is in their early fifties. Close to four in ten households are one person on their own. It is a village of owners, and the gap where the young working households should be is the loudest thing in the figures.
On tenure, about 66% of households own their home and roughly 14% rent privately, with another 19% renting socially. That social rented share is worth noticing in a place with this kind of coastline, because it is the part of the population that could never have bought in at current prices and is the reason the village still has residents rather than just guests.
The age profile follows. The median resident is 51, and only about 21% of people are aged 25 to 44. That is the band that staffs a pub, runs a boat, fills a school and takes on a mortgage, and it is thin here.
Income is modest for a place with these house prices. Modelled household income averaged around £46,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, which is a gross figure describing that year rather than today, and it is the number to hold in mind whenever anyone describes this village as affluent. Coastal frontage and household earnings are not the same measurement.
Household shapes are unusually small. Roughly 8% of households are lone parents, which is low, and it fits a place where family-sized households are outnumbered by everything else.
Take the full picture from the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure here. About 38% of households are a single person living alone, and about 22% are a pensioner living alone, that second group sitting inside the first rather than alongside it. Couples with dependent children make up around 17%. A village where more households are one person than are families with children is a specific kind of place, and it is quieter in February than the summer trade suggests.
Educationally the village splits two ways. About 32% of residents hold degree-level qualifications and about 19% have none at all, with full-time students at roughly 1%. Both of those groups live on the same lanes, which is more than can be said for most places where the graduate share runs that high.
Health locally reports well: about 83% of residents describe their health as good or very good, and around 5% as bad or very bad. Across the wider Cornwall local authority, preventable mortality is rated similar to England, and adult smoking is also similar to England. Those two are county-level benchmarks rather than readings from this village, and they say something about Cornwall's health service pressures rather than about anybody's front door here.
As a population profile this is one of the weaker parts of the case for Port Isaac: an older, modest-earning village with few families and few people in their working prime, held together by long-term owners and a social rented stock that keeps the lights on out of season. Buyers who want a place with generational churn should understand they will be joining the group that keeps it stable, not the group that changes it.