Older, better off, and mostly not moving. The median resident is 54. About 77 percent own their home. Around four in ten hold a degree or higher qualification. The typical household earns around £61,000 a year. This is not a place people arrive in their twenties, and it is not a place people leave in their sixties. It is where people settle in the middle and stay.
Ownership dominates the tenure picture. Around 77 percent of homes are owner-occupied, which is well above the average for anywhere within striking distance of the south coast. Private renters make up roughly 13 percent of households, and social renters another 9 percent. That leaves a rental market that is present but shallow, and a purchase market that behaves the way slow-turnover markets always behave: not much comes up, and what does come up sits at prices that reflect its scarcity. About one household in ten has no car at all. Around 46 percent have two cars or more. That is the arithmetic of a town where most residents have committed to a life that expects driving to be part of the daily routine, not a life shaped by public transport timetables.
The median resident is 54, which sits in the middle of the settled adult range rather than at either extreme. Only around 15 percent of residents fall into the 25-to-44 age band, which is the range typically associated with early-career professionals and young families. Steyning is not where people are starting their adult lives. It is where people settle after they've established what those lives look like. The full-time student share is under two percent. The unemployment rate is around two percent. Nobody here is at the pivot points of adulthood: the town is not a launch pad, a college town, or a place people wash up when things haven't worked out. It is a place people choose after the choosing has happened.
The typical household earns around £61,000 a year before tax, which translates to a net figure of around £44,000. That is well above the English average, and reflects a resident base that is either dual-earner professional, retired on private pensions, or drawing on the equity that arrived with them when they moved here. About 40 percent of adults hold a degree or higher qualification. Around 13 percent hold no formal qualifications at all. This is not the income profile of a town in economic trouble. It is the profile of a town whose economy is largely detached from the local job market, because most of the residents either work from home, work in the wider Sussex professional economy, or have already stopped working. Around 43 percent of workers now work from home, which is one of the highest home-working shares outside a London borough.
Household composition tells its own story. About 35 percent of households are single-person households, and around 23 percent are single-pensioner households specifically. That means roughly two in three of the single-person households are pensioners rather than young singles. Couples with dependent children make up about 15 percent of households. Lone-parent households make up around 8 percent. The remaining share is couples without dependent children, either childless or empty-nested. The overall shape is heavily weighted toward smaller households, longer-tenure ownership, and later life stages. This is a town of ones and twos, not fours and fives, and the housing stock is priced accordingly.
Five out of five on the local community. This is a stable, better-off, mostly older adult population that chose Steyning and stayed. Whether that suits you is a question worth answering honestly before you spend an evening deciding you fit in.