Mostly homeowners who arrived, settled and saw no reason to leave. Seven in ten households own. Half the adults have a degree. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. The ladder here has very few bottom rungs.
At the 2021 Census, about 73% of households in the Shalford area owned their home, outright or with a mortgage. About 13% rented privately and about 13% rented social housing, so the quarter who rent are split almost evenly between private landlords and social landlords. That second group rarely makes it into the Surrey village brochure, but it's there, and it keeps the place from being one long row of people who bought in the same decade.
The median resident is 46, and about 22% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That's a place weighted towards people past the first-home stage: established careers, older children or none at home, and a mortgage that no longer keeps anyone awake. Young adults are present, but they're not setting the tone.
Household income is high. The Office for National Statistics modelled average gross household income, before tax, at about £76,000 for the financial year to March 2023. That figure describes income three years ago, not today's pay packets, and it's an average across the area rather than a typical street.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 Census. About 30% of households are one person living alone, and about 16% are a single pensioner, a group that sits inside that 30% rather than on top of it. Couples with dependent children make up about 22% of households, and lone parents about 7%. So for every family doing the school run, there's someone living alone who remembers doing it.
About 50% of adults hold a degree-level qualification and about 11% have no formal qualifications, which is a wider spread than the house prices would lead anyone to guess. Full-time students make up about 1% of residents, so this isn't somewhere the university spills into, despite Guildford being next door.
About 233 people in the wider area live in communal settings, such as care homes, rather than in private households. That's too few to change how any of the other shares should be read.
The people of Shalford are comfortable, educated and settled, and the place reads as a well-off village with more variety in it than its reputation admits.