Mostly people who were already here. About six in ten own their homes and four in ten rent. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Nearly a third of households are one person on their own. Whatever the housebuilding on the northern edge of town implies, this is not a place filling up with new arrivals so much as one quietly staying put.
Tenure splits about 59% owner-occupied against roughly 22% renting privately and about 18% renting from a social landlord. That social share is substantial for a Devon market town and it is the part of the housing picture the heritage photography never gets round to including. Between them, private and social renting account for about four in ten households, which is a higher proportion than most people expect of somewhere that looks like this.
The age profile is settled rather than old. The median age is about 44, and roughly 24% of residents are in the 25 to 44 bracket, so there is a working-age core here rather than a retirement town wearing a market town's clothes. Census 2021 is the source for the population figures throughout this answer.
Household income sits at roughly £48,800 gross, before tax, modelled by the Office for National Statistics for small areas covering the town. That figure describes the financial year to March 2023 rather than today, which matters given everything that has happened to costs since. After tax, the same modelling puts net household income at about £37,500.
The town holds 9,749 households, and the largest single type is one person living alone, at about 32%. Around 15% of all households are a pensioner living alone, and that group sits inside the single-person figure rather than alongside it. A third of a town's front doors opening onto one person is the sort of statistic that explains the pub count better than the tourism does.
Families make up a smaller share than the school provision might suggest. Couples with dependent children account for about 18% of households and lone-parent households about 11%. That combination, alongside the single-person share, describes a town where the family years are one phase of a longer residency rather than the defining stage.
On qualifications, roughly 26% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 20% hold none at all. Full-time students make up about 1%, which follows from there being no university here and the sixth-form-age population being small. The spread is broad rather than concentrated at either end, and it describes a mixed working population rather than a graduate enclave or its opposite.
For completeness, 288 people live in communal establishments such as care homes rather than in private households, out of a population of about 22,100. That is small enough not to distort any of the shares above.
The people here are ordinary in the least insulting sense of the word: settled, working, moderately paid, more likely to be living alone than raising children, and sitting a little below the national middle on the measures that track advantage.