Rents continue to surge in Kilkenny amid chronic shortage of housing: report
The house rental market in Kilkenny is reflecting the issues in the property market nationally at present as rents in the county continue to rise, new figures reveal.
The latest Rental Price Report from Daft.ie reveals rents have increased on average by 6.1% in Kilkenny over the past 12 months, while stocks of rental properties continued to decrease.
As of today, there are just 14 properties available to rent in county Kilkenny, with just four of these being in Kilkenny City.
Of those available in the city, the cheapest stands at €1,200 and the average is €1,250.
According to the latest figures from Daft.ie, the average price of a rental in Kilkenny as a whole now stands at €1,057, a rise of 6.1% year-on-year. This also represents a 2.2% increase on the last quarter.
The report reveals that in Kilkenny one-bed rentals are up 5.8% to €765; a two-bedroom rental has increased by 5.4% up to €864; rents on a three-bed have increased by 2.9% up to €972; while a four bedroom rental has increased by 7.8% up to €1,123, and five or more bedroom houses have increased by 5.6%, up to €1,228.
The author of the report, Ronan Lyons, said these rental figures show there is a strain on the rental market in county Kilkenny and around the country, however prices in Dublin are tumbling.
“Dublin rents were down 3.2%, almost exactly the same fall recorded in 2020Q4, while in the rest of the country rents were 7.1% higher.
“This marks the largest gap between Dublin and elsewhere in the country since 2014, when the opposite trend held.
“Then as now, the trends in rental prices are driven by trends in availability and supply. And it is in those numbers that we may be starting to see the first signs of a normal service resuming in the rental market.
“With the vaccination programme well underway and public health restrictions easing, it seems likely that renters are already thinking ahead and making decisions based on where things will be later in the year rather than where they are now or were recently.
“Covid-19 has done many things and wrought changes previously thought unthinkable in many instances. What it cannot do, however, is change the simple fact that for close to thirty years, Ireland has built too few homes,” Mr Lyons concluded.
