Apartments for rent in Kairouan

Looking for an apartment to rent in Kairouan first means accepting that the word does not cover the same thing as in Tunis or Sousse. Residences with a lift and parking remain rare. What is most often let is a floor of a house with its own entrance, an S+1 or S+2 in a small block of two or three storeys, or a studio built on the roof or in an outbuilding.

The listings on this page cover the whole governorate, but most of them are in the city, between Kairouan Nord and Kairouan Sud. They are posted by owners and a few agencies, whom you contact directly. Supply shifts a lot with the academic calendar: an apartment for rent in Kairouan in August has nothing in common, in number or in price, with what you find in February.

The house floor, the most common apartment

The pattern is familiar throughout the city: the family lives on the ground floor, the upper floor was built for a son who lives elsewhere, and it is let in the meantime. You gain space, often three rooms and a terrace, for a moderate rent. You lose a little privacy: a shared staircase, a shared water tank, sometimes a single meter. This type of property attracts families and couples of civil servants who intend to stay several years.

Recent small blocks are found mostly in the southern districts and along the main roads out of the city, where building has gone on for some fifteen years. Rents there are a little higher, for a level of comfort that depends heavily on the developer: look at the kitchen finishes, the waterproofing of the roof terrace and the state of the common areas. The apartments for rent in Kairouan Sud give a good idea of this supply.

Studios and small units around the institutes

The studio for rent in Kairouan is the strongest demand and the thinnest supply. Students at the higher institutes, notably those of computer science and management, want to be within walking distance of their school, and owners in nearby neighbourhoods have divided houses into studios and S+1 units. At the start of the academic year you have to decide fast: a decent studio does not stay online for more than a few days.

Rent for a studio rarely goes beyond a few hundred dinars, but check what is included. Water and electricity or not, internet, furniture: two studios at the same price can cost very different amounts by the end of the month. Groups of two or three students are often better off renting an S+2 together than three studios; shared flats in Kairouan bring this type of listing together.

Furnished and daily rentals

A furnished apartment in Kairouan is let in two ways. By the year, it targets transferred managers, doctors posted at the regional hospital and teachers who do not want to move their furniture for two years. By the day, it hosts visitors to the medina, families in town for a wedding and above all the crowds of the Mouled, when prices rise and you need to book several weeks ahead. For these short stays, ask for recent photos, the exact address and what the price covers: linen, air conditioning, a parking space.

Outside the city, apartments remain rare. In Bouhajla, a few new floors are let to the town's civil servants; the apartments for rent in Bouhajla are enough to see what exists. Elsewhere, people turn to a house instead.

What to check during the viewing

On the top floor, July heat comes through the slab: ask whether the roof terrace has been insulated and touch the ceiling in the afternoon. Turn on the taps upstairs, since pressure drops in summer in several districts and a tank with a booster pump then makes all the difference. For a floor in an occupied house, have it spelled out who pays for water and electricity if the meters are shared. Finally, insist on a written contract stating the rent, the advance and the deposit, and draw up a dated inventory backed by photos. To widen the search to houses and villa floors, the page of homes to rent in Kairouan governorate groups everything together.