Settled homeowners in early middle age, mostly, and they have no plans to leave. Three in four own their home. Nearly half the adults hold a degree. Almost nine in ten say their health is good. Wokingham is what a mortgage looks like at the halfway mark.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 census. About 75% of households own their home, about 14% rent privately and about 9% rent from a social landlord. Private renting is a sideline rather than a way of life, and the landlords who do operate here are letting to people saving up to join the owners.
The median resident is 42, and about 25% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That is a town past the first-flat stage and into the years of school runs, extensions and arguments about whose turn it is to host Christmas. The twenty-somethings exist, but they are mostly visiting their parents.
Average household income across the area was about £82,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, a gross figure modelled by the Office for National Statistics rather than a current one. It is comfortable money, and it tends to be earned by two people, one of whom is usually on a video call in the spare room.
Families are the backbone. About 26% of households are couples with dependent children and about 8% are lone parents. The four-bedroom house was built for exactly this arrangement, and the arrangement has turned up to fill it.
At the other end, about 25% of households are one person living alone, and about 11% of all households are a single pensioner, a group that sits inside that one-person share rather than on top of it. Every estate has its long-standing residents who bought when the houses were new and have watched three sets of neighbours extend around them.
About 48% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree-level qualification, about 10% have no qualifications and about 2% are full-time students. The mix leans heavily towards the graduate end, and the pub quiz league is presumably fiercer than it looks.
About 88% of residents describe their health as good or very good. At the level of the Wokingham local authority rather than the town itself, the preventable mortality rate is better than the England average, and so is the smoking rate, at about 7% of adults. The borough's own numbers are the kind a public health officer frames and hangs in the corridor.
Wokingham's residents make up one of the most settled, comfortable and healthy populations a buyer will find, and its sense of community is one of its real strengths: people move here to put down roots, and most of them manage it.