Mostly homeowners in early middle age, with degrees and comfortable incomes. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. Nearly half have a degree. It is a suburb of established households, more mortgage than first rent.
Every population figure on this page comes from the 2021 Census unless it says otherwise. On that count about 72% of Purley's households own their home, about 16% rent privately and about 10% rent from a council or housing association. With so few private lets, most people on your street will have bought rather than be passing through.
The median age is 41, and about 27% of residents are aged 25 to 44. The typical resident is old enough to have a mortgage and young enough to still be paying it off.
The Office for National Statistics modelled Purley's typical household income at about £84,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That is a gross figure for a period now some way behind, so what households actually take home today is a smaller and more recent number.
About 23% of households are couples with dependent children and about 11% are lone-parent families. About 24% are one person living alone, and that group includes the 10% of households that are a single pensioner. So the families with children are only part of the picture. Plenty of homes have one occupant, and some of those have been in them a long time.
About 47% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree or equivalent, about 12% have no formal qualifications, and only about 2% are full-time students. With no university here, most of those degrees were earned elsewhere and arrived in Purley with the furniture.
About 86% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across the London Borough of Croydon as a whole, the preventable death rate and the smoking rate, at about 13% of adults, are both similar to England's. Those comparisons cover the entire borough, so they describe Croydon in general and not Purley in particular.
Purley is mostly settled, well-qualified owners on good incomes, with a solid share of families and a fair number of people living alone. As places go, it is clearly better off than average.