Mostly working-age renters live in Willesden, and owners are the minority. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Fewer than a third of households own their home. The rest rent in roughly equal shares from private landlords and from councils or housing associations. On paper, the landlord is the most common neighbour in Willesden.
The 2021 Census, which is the source for every population figure here, counted about 104,000 people in roughly 39,400 households. About 29% of households own their home, about 35% rent privately and about 34% rent from a council or housing association. A buyer moving in is joining a street where most of the neighbours have a landlord.
The typical resident is 36, and about 32% of people are between 25 and 44. Willesden is a place for the years between finishing your education and owning a house. The area was a rural parish until the Metropolitan Railway reached Willesden Green in 1879 and filled it with people commuting into London, and it has been an area of young working adults ever since.
The Office for National Statistics models typical gross household income across the area at about £62,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That figure covers households with two earners alongside those on one income, so it tells you little about how any single street lives. It also sits a long way below the price of a house here.
About 31% of households are one person living alone, and about 8% are a pensioner living alone, which is part of that 31%, not on top of it. Couples with dependent children make up about 17% of households and lone parents about 19%. About 17% of households are overcrowded. Families here tend to make do with whatever space the flat has, because a bigger home costs too much.
About 38% of residents hold a degree, while about 22% have no formal qualifications. Both groups often share the same terrace, sometimes the same converted house. Only about 3% are full-time students, so this is somewhere people live after their studies, and Willesden's landlords mostly rent to people with jobs, not to students.
About 83% of residents described their health as good or very good at the census, and about 5% as bad or very bad. Across the London Borough of Brent as a whole, the preventable death rate is better than the England average, and smoking is at a similar level to England's. Those are borough-wide figures with an England benchmark and say nothing about any one street.
On the measures this page weighs for who lives here, Willesden comes out poorly. Few households own their home, the area has slipped further down the deprivation rankings, and a buyer looking for a settled street of owner-occupiers will have to hunt for one.