Hotline for offline house hunters

by Rohana Jayalal

The 'Dial 4 Home' service, where home buyers call a hotline to find property for sale or rent in Colombo was launched last week.

The new service will put offline house hunters in touch with a broad selection of property listings from the Lamudi website.

In the real estate business, offline methods are still the most established systems and thus the 'Dial 4 Home' service would bridge this gap.

The service is designed to simplify the search for properties by allowing house hunters to use a single platform to find their ideal home.

Lamudi Sri Lanka, Managing Director Hugh van der Kolff said that the luxury condominium market had picked up steadily and with large projects such as Altair and Colombo City Centre being set up there would be significant demand. A market driver in the luxury condominium segment was the large number of Sri Lankan expatriates. "There are three key market segments, the Sri Lankan diaspora, foreigners and high-end Sri Lankan customers."

"There was healthy competition from other real estate websites, the number of visits to Lamudi.lk had increased considerably since its launch. We get around 4,500 to 5,000 hits per day and it's growing," van der Kolff said.

The international interest in the Sri Lankan real estate industry had picked up.

"Quite a lot of investment is flowing into the country from abroad," van der Kolff said. Sri Lanka's real estate market is opening and with an improving economy, more expatriates and locals are buying property in Sri Lanka.

Since 2005, the real estate market has reflected the country's economic growth momentum and had grown from 7.6% in 2005 to 10.3% in 2013.