Richmond is an average place to live with a first-class address. The neighbours are the draw. Seven in ten adults have a degree, nine in ten say their health is good, and household incomes run to six figures. The streets are the snag, because recorded crime here runs well above the rest of the borough that owns it.
Just over half of households own their home, 56% at the 2021 Census, and the typical resident is 41. The Office for National Statistics models gross household income across the area at about £105,000 for the financial year to March 2023, an average across neighbourhoods and before tax. Put graduates in their early forties together with that kind of money and the Saturday farmers' market in Heron Square was always going to happen.
The Metropolitan Police recorded about 105 crimes per 1,000 residents in Richmond in the year to May 2026, roughly 42% above the Richmond upon Thames average of about 74. Anti-social behaviour is the largest category at 23% of the total. Vehicle crime makes up 12%, against 5% across England and Wales, and shoplifting another 11%. Across the whole Metropolitan Police area, about 10% of crimes ended in a charge over the same year, against about 12% nationally. The borough with the least poverty in London has made its main town the most rewarding place in it to try a car door.
The past is everywhere and it has legal protection. The area holds 387 listed buildings, 19 of them Grade I, among them Trumpeters' House, and 34 conservation areas fall in and around it, from Central Richmond to Kew Green. Inside them, the council looks hard at extensions, demolition and anything that changes the front of a house. Richmond upon Thames logged 1,548 planning applications here between April 2024 and July 2026, 611 of them in the last twelve months, so the planning history of the houses either side of a target property is worth reading before a loft conversion goes into the sums. In a town where Henry VII's Gate House of 1501 is still somebody's home, a new window is a planning matter.
The Land Registry recorded 235 sales in the year to May 2026, at a typical price of about £720,000. Flats went for about £515,000, terraced houses about £990,000 and semis about £1,350,000, while the six detached houses sold had a typical price of £2,500,000. The official house price index has the average down about 3% over the same year. Band D is the most common council tax band, at about £2,490 a year, and bands A and B together cover about 2% of homes. A small council tax bill is something people here only hear about from relatives.
Tenants are measured against a borough-wide number: about £2,310 a month across Richmond upon Thames in the Office for National Statistics rental index for April 2026, up about 6% on a year earlier. A one-bedroom home averages about £1,710 on that measure and a two-bedroom about £2,200. Roughly 31% of households here rent privately, so plenty of people are paying it.
Half the homes on the council tax list are flats, 50%, with terraced houses at 29%, semis at 15% and detached houses at 5%. About 58% of homes were built before 1930. Energy certificates put 47% in bands A to C and 16% in E or worse. Three quarters of homes heat with mains gas, and about 12% rely on electric heating alone. Much of the older stock was built for coal fires and servants, and the energy ratings still remember both.
Richmond (London) station is the main stop, with North Sheen and Kew Gardens stations also serving the area. There are 116 bus stops, and the typical stop sees about 419 departures on a weekday, around 22 of them in the busiest hour, with every stop served at weekends. Gigabit broadband reaches 83% of premises and superfast 96%. At the 2021 Census, 65% of working residents worked from home and 4% took the train, figures gathered when commuting was at a historic low. About a third of households have no car.
The Thames is tidal at Richmond, and the Environment Agency's mapping puts 20% of postcodes in the highest river-and-sea flood zone and 4% in the middle one, with 30% inside the extent drawn for climate change. On a wider measure that includes surface water, 12% of postcodes carry a high rating on at least one flood indicator. The same river that sells the riverside flats is the one on the maps.
Ofsted has graded 25 schools and settings across Richmond upon Thames, and all 25 are good or better, 10 of them outstanding. Primary schools in the area include Darell Primary and Nursery School, Kew Riverside Primary School and The King's Church of England Primary School, and the three local primaries with results averaged about 106 in the Key Stage 2 maths test. The Department for Transport's 2019 model puts the nearest primary about eight minutes' walk away and the nearest secondary about 22. Parents here study admissions criteria with the kind of focus most people save for a mortgage offer.
Green space is the easy part. The nearest public green space is on average about 120 metres from a front door, there are around 31 within a kilometre, and water is about 470 metres away. Richmond Green is in the middle of town, the Old Deer Park runs along the river to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and Richmond Park is over the hill. Elizabeth I hunted stags in the Old Deer Park and died at Richmond Palace in 1603. George III got an observatory in 1769 and the main shopping street named after him, which is how the town still treats its most loyal customers. This page also covers Kew and North Sheen, which share the parks and most of the postcode.
Richmond is a fair, middling place to live once the price and the crime are weighed against the people you will be living among. It suits professionals who work from home, want the park on the doorstep and can afford a house, and it suits less anyone who parks a good car on the street and expects to find it intact.