Virginia Water is lived in by people who've already made it and would like some quiet to enjoy it in. Three in four own their home. Half hold a degree. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Nobody here is starting out. Most of them finished some time ago.
About 74% of households own their home outright or with a mortgage. About 20% rent privately and about 4% rent from a council or housing association. Renting here is mostly a stage between one purchase and the next, and the private landlords tend to know it.
The 2021 Census, which supplies every population figure on this page, puts the median age at 46. People aged 25 to 44 make up about 21% of residents. That's the age bracket that usually does the house-hunting, and here it's a minority. The buyers who can afford the place have generally lived long enough to earn the deposit twice.
Modelled household income averaged about £69,000 a year before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That's a comfortable figure, and it describes that year rather than today. It also falls well short of what the houses cost, which tells you that plenty of residents bought with money they made somewhere else, or years earlier.
Households split along familiar lines. Couples with children make up about 24% of households, lone parents about 8%, and people living alone about 25%. About 12% of households are a single pensioner living alone, and they're part of that 25%, not on top of it. So families and people living alone hold roughly level shares, and a large detached house doesn't always come with a large household inside it. Plenty of four-bedroom houses here have one or two people rattling round in them.
About 50% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree, about 12% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. Degree holders are the majority, but not the whole of it, and the no-qualifications share is worth remembering by anyone who assumed a Surrey postcode came with a university gown. Students are rare. They live in Egham, near the college, and visit on foot.
Of the 6,842 residents, 242 live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households. That's too few to change the picture, but it helps explain why the older end of the age profile holds its own.
Virginia Water's residents are one of its real strengths: settled, well educated and comfortably off, in a place that doesn't change hands often. The catch is that joining them costs more than most of them paid.