St John's Wood is home mainly to renters, and to two quite different groups of them. Seven in ten households rent. Nearly a third rent from a social landlord. More than half the adults hold a degree. The big houses get the photographs, but the social-rented flats house almost as many households as owners do.
Ownership is the minority option here. At the 2021 Census about 29% of households in St John's Wood owned their home, about 40% rented privately and about 30% rented from a social landlord. The district runs as two neighbourhoods under one name, and the one in the housing-association flats rarely makes the postcards.
The population is younger than the architecture. Every figure on this page comes from the 2021 Census unless it says otherwise, and on that count the typical resident of St John's Wood is about 37, with about 33% of residents aged 25 to 44. For a district lined with Victorian villas, that is a lot of people who were not alive when the last of them changed hands for a sensible price.
Income is strong. The Office for National Statistics modelled gross household income, before tax, at about £72,500 across St John's Wood for the financial year to March 2023, an average across the district's nine middle-layer areas. It buys a comfortable life in most of London and a long, hard look at the flats here.
Households are small. About 38% are one person living alone, and about 12% of households are a single pensioner, who are counted within that one-person share. Couples with children make up about 15% of households and lone parents about 12%. Nearly four in ten front doors here open on a single occupant, and in a district of flats that is the obvious shape for it.
The district is well qualified. About 54% of adults hold a degree, about 16% have no qualifications and only about 3% are full-time students. Students are scarce for an obvious reason: a student budget and a St John's Wood rent have little to say to each other.
Health is good. About 84% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across Westminster as a whole, the preventable mortality rate is better than England's, while smoking, at about 14% of adults, is similar to the England figure. Those last two describe the whole borough, Mayfair and Pimlico included, and stand as Westminster's picture more than St John's Wood's own.
The population here comes out middling on the measures that count: well educated, healthy and fairly young, but split between private renting and social housing, with home ownership confined to under a third of households.