Sale's built environment is varied, with a mixture of modern and old buildings. Some terraces, semi-detached houses and villas, survive from the Victorian period, although many of the larger houses have been converted into flats. Many semi-detached houses survive from the 1930s, when there was a need for new housing in the town as a result of a growing population and an increasingly wealthy middle class. Interspersed with these older structures are newer housing developments, such as the estates built in Ashton upon Mersey and the east of Sale during the 1970s.