Hundreds of new homes completed

NEARLY 600 MORE HOMES AVAILABLE IN KERRY THAN THIS TIME LAST YEAR

CLOSE to 600 new homes became available in Kerry last year according to new figures from GeoDirectory, the national address database jointly run by An Post and Ordnance Survey Ireland.

GeoDirectory say that 585 dwellings in Kerry were added to its database in 2017.

Most of these were new homes while a portion were existing properties that have been brought up to acceptable living standards. These would – for example – include previously unfinished houses in ghost estates.

The average residential property price in Kerry in 2017 was €156,241 which is considerably below the average national property price (excluding Dublin) of €187,623.

In Kerry, the area with the highest average residential property price last year was Killarney where the average home is worth €202,477.

Meanwhile the residential vacancy rate in Kerry remains extremely high.

According to GeoDirectory’s report, in December 2017 ten per cent of all houses in Kerry were classed as vacant, that is more than double the national average of 4.8 per cent.

When it came to sales, the turnover rate in Kerry was also slower than average. The Kerry housing turnover rate was 1.97 per cent, lower than the national average of 2.5 per cent.

Nationally, construction activity has doubled relative to the same period last year and in Kerry 163 buildings were under construction in December 2017.

A total of 312 residential commencements were recorded in Kerry in 2017.