Since the beginning of the year there has been an increase in real estate activity by property buyers and sellers, according to Sri Lanka’s leading property portal LankaPropertyWeb. The company stated that a comparison between the number of visits to lankapropertyweb.com during the month of January in 2020 and 2021, showed an increase of 23 [...]

Business Times

Property buyers returning to the market, industry says

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Since the beginning of the year there has been an increase in real estate activity by property buyers and sellers, according to Sri Lanka’s leading property portal LankaPropertyWeb.

The company stated that a comparison between the number of visits to lankapropertyweb.com during the month of January in 2020 and 2021, showed an increase of 23 per cent while leads generated to advertisers on the site increased by 20 per cent.

LankaPropertyWeb (LPW) also saw an acceleration in visitors by 22 per cent and leads by 20 per cent when compared with December 2020 and January 2021. According to the site, January 2021 saw the highest number of visitors to the site since the start of the pandemic, it explained in a media release.

This trend seems industry wide as another property site, house.lk reported a 26 per cent jump in its visits during January in comparison with December 2020. House.lk also reported an all-time high number of visits to the site in January of this year.

With restrictions around COVID-19 easing and confidence returning to the market, property buyers are increasingly positive over closing sales since the start of this year. In fact, the recently published data by LankaPropertyWeb revealed that only 8 per cent of its 63,250 advertisers had reduced advertised prices during 2020, with an average reduction of 11 per cent. In some cases, these reductions result from the seller’s urgency to sell and further discounts being offered to buyers when closing a sale.

88 per cent of property advertisers did not change their initial advertised price while 4 per cent of the advertisers increased their initial tagged price by 12 per cent. This shows that despite the pandemic, the real estate market in Sri Lanka has remained stable last year, the release said.

Meanwhile, high reductions in commercial property were seen by advertisers who reduced their property prices by 13 per cent in the last year. This is mainly credited to the price fluctuations and the shift to working from home policies that many businesses have adopted now.

Commenting on the market, Naveed Zaveer, Director at Menavid Realtors said, “There has been an improvement in the property market since December 2020, with inquiries being made. The opening of the Sri Lankan airport on January 21 to tourists is also a positive step towards revitalizing the economy. We stay positive and hopeful that this will create a positive mindset in the minds of the investors, motivating them to invest further in the property market.”

A study on people’s search trends revealed that last year Colombo ranked as the No.1 city in rental property searches. This was followed by Kandy and Dehiwala that ranked 2nd and 3rd, respectively. While in 2019, Colombo ranked 1st, Dehiwala ranked 2nd, Nugegoda was 3rd and Kandy was in the 4th place in rental searches ranking. This shows that metropolitan areas are yet in demand in renting, irrespective of the pandemic.

In the 2020 sales property searches, Colombo ranked number 1 again, maintaining its 2019 position for the same criteria. Kandy and Negombo placed 2nd and 3rd respectively in the sales property search. While the ranking in land searches revealed that Kandy, Kurunegala and Nuwara Eliya were placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively.

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