Theydon Bois is mostly settled, middle-aged homeowners with comfortable incomes. Eight in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their late forties. Household incomes are well into five figures before tax. Families with children and people living alone account for similar shares of households.
Across the Theydon Bois area, about 80% of households own their home. About 13% rent privately and about 7% rent from a council or housing association. With so few homes to let, a family wanting to try the village before buying will find the rental choice very limited.
The median age in the area is 48, and only about 21% of residents are aged 25 to 44. People move here at a certain stage of life and then stay. The residents bought the house with the four bedrooms and the forest at the end of the road, and they have every intention of keeping both.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income in the area at around £71,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. After tax and other deductions the same households come out at about £48,000. Gross income makes a good headline, but the net figure is the one people actually live on.
Census 2021 counted 2,592 households across the Theydon Bois area, and about 8% of them are lone parents with children. The village is not just retired couples and grown-up families, and a minority of households have only one parent paying for the school uniforms and the run to Epping.
Census 2021 is also the source for the rest of the household picture. About 23% of households are one person living alone, and within that about 13% are pensioners living on their own. About 22% are couples with children. With the median age at 48, many of the families here have older children, and some of the single-person households are people whose children have already moved out.
About 33% of residents hold a degree, while about 19% have no formal qualifications, so the area is more mixed than the commuter-village image suggests. Full-time students are about 1% of residents, which is what you would expect in a place where the cheapest home on most streets has three bedrooms.
The people of Theydon Bois are healthy, comfortably off and mostly here to stay. That makes the village a stable place to live, and an easy one to fit into for anyone who is also planning to stay.