€6,000 wiped off value of Kilkenny homes

The average house price in county Kilkenny fell by more than €6,000 in just 12 months, a new survey reveals.

This decade has begun by replicating what occurred in 2009 and 2010 at the height of the property crash when house prices in Kilkenny dropped by a massive 22%.

The 12 months up to the end of December 2020 recorded the first average year-on-year drop in Kilkenny house prices since 2013, according to the latest Daft.ie house price report.

Despite the drop, house prices in Kilkenny remain among the highest in the country outside Dublin and its commuter belt, Cork city and Galway city.

The report reveals the average price of a house in Kilkenny now stands at €209,516, down from €216,011 at the end of 2018, a drop of 3.1%.

According to the report, house prices in Kilkenny are the most expensive outside of Dublin city, the commuter belt outside the capital, Cork city and county, Galway city and Waterford county. Overall, Kilkenny was ranked the 13th most expensive of the 35 areas identified in the report.

Commenting on the overall findings, the author of the report Ronan Lyons noted that the most recent housing boom lasted the exact same amount of time as the bust which preceded it.

“It was a decade that started with rapidly falling prices and closes with gently falling ones. In the first quarter of 2010, sale prices nationally were 17.4% lower than a year previously – just one of 16 consecutive quarters where prices fell by more than 10% in year-on-year terms and the tenth of 24 consecutive quarters where prices were falling,” said Mr Lyons.

“For the following 24 quarters, from 2013 to 2019, the average listed sale price nationally was higher than it had been a year previously. In other words, the sale price boom lasted as long as the preceding bust: six years.”