Yarmouth is mostly owned, mostly older, and mostly not commuting anywhere. About three in four households own the home they live in. The median resident is fifty-nine. The typical household earns about forty-five and a half thousand pounds a year. The single biggest household type is one person living alone.
The tenure split is the first thing that tells you who lives here. About three in four households own their home, either outright or with a mortgage. About one in seven rent privately. About one in ten rent through a social landlord. Roughly a quarter of households in total are renting one way or the other. That ratio of ownership is well above the national average, and it is the shape of a place where the housing has been held for a long time by the people now in it.
The age profile is older than the country and older than most of the island. The median resident is fifty-nine, which is well above the national median. Only about one resident in seven falls within the prime working-age bracket of twenty-five to forty-four, which is the bracket that drives household formation, school-age children, and the daytime activity of most market towns. The bracket that does most of the work in Yarmouth is the one above it.
The typical household here earns about forty-five and a half thousand pounds a year before tax. That is close to the national average, which is unusual for a town with this age profile, because the median resident is well into retirement and a third of working residents do not commute to a salaried mainland job at all. The income picture is therefore asset-supported as much as earned, which is what happens when three in four households own the house they live in and pay no mortgage on it.
The household make-up is dominated by single occupiers. About a third of households contain one person living alone. About one household in five is a single pensioner, which is more than double the share of households with dependent children. Couples with children make up about nine per cent of households; lone-parent households account for around seven per cent. The shape is small households with quiet front doors, not the family-led streets of a commuter town.
Who lives in Yarmouth is who lives in any small ferry town that has aged in place: a majority of older owner-occupiers, with the prime working-age bracket thinned out to the point of notice. Asset-rich, income-modest, and a long way from the demographic shape a buyer in their thirties would recognise as home.