Homeowners in their fifties, mostly, and the town is entirely unbothered about it. Around seven in ten own the roof over their heads. The median resident is in their mid-fifties. A third of households are one person living alone. This is a settled town rather than a starter town, and the people here arrived intending to stay rather than to flip.
On tenure, the 2021 census puts owner-occupation across the wider Watchet area at about 68%, with roughly 17% renting privately and about 15% renting from a social landlord. That social housing share is worth noticing, because it is the part of the picture that coastal-town marketing tends to leave out. This is not a town that has been fully colonised by second homes and holiday money, whatever the harbour front suggests.
The age profile is the defining fact. The median resident is 56, and only about 17% of the population falls in the 25 to 44 bracket. That absence shapes everything from what opens in the evening to who is available to serve you in it. Places with this profile do not have a nightlife problem so much as a nightlife irrelevance.
Household incomes here run at about £44,500, modelled gross before tax, and describing the financial year to March 2023 rather than today. That is the figure to hold in mind when reading anything about local affordability: it is not a poor town, and it is not a wealthy one either.
Household shapes follow the age profile. Around 33% of households are a single person living alone, and about 19% are a pensioner living alone, that second figure being a subset of the first rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children make up roughly 12% of households and lone-parent households about 7%. Families exist here in real numbers, they are just not the town's centre of gravity. Every population figure on this page comes from the 2021 census.
Qualifications split fairly evenly in both directions. About 30% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and roughly 20% hold none at all, with full-time students at about 1%. That is a genuine mix rather than a single type, which is more than can be said for a lot of towns that market themselves harder.
On health, roughly 76% of residents report their health as good or very good, and about 7% report it as bad or very bad. Somerset, the local authority covering the area, records a preventable mortality rate better than the England average, and adult smoking at about 11%, which the same comparison rates as similar to England. Those two figures describe the whole county rather than this town, and they describe outcomes rather than anyone's choices.
Almost everyone here lives in an ordinary household. Across the area, 75 people live in communal establishments such as care homes, which is small enough not to distort any of the shares above.
Who lives here is the most ordinary answer this town gives. Middling incomes, an older profile, a solid ownership base and a real spread of qualifications, which adds up to a place that is comfortable rather than prosperous and has stopped auditioning for anything else.