LankaPropertyWeb Sees Traffic Gain as Sri Lankan Market Rebounds

It seems that it's not only mature markets that are seeing a rebound in house-hunting, market-leading Sri Lankan property portal LankaPropertyWeb today released a statement reporting a year-on-year traffic increase for January of 23% with corresponding leads sent to agents up 20%. According to the press release, the upwardly trending traffic is not restricted to only one site as secondary portal House.lk, which LankaPropertyWeb acquired from Lamudi in 2018, also saw a 26% jump in visits in January.

The report went on to cite returning confidence in the market, record low home loans and the re-opening of tourism in Sri Lanka as reasons for the renewed optimism in the country's housing market. The portal also claims that only 8% of its 63,250 advertisers had reduced advertised prices during 2020, with an average reduction of 11%.

Many other portals in mature markets around the world have reported seeing signs of recovery in their housing markets. Rightmove recorded record traffic for January, and Zillow has seen its stock price surge as Americans flock online to find a new place to live in 2021. Even for relatively harder hit companies such as Adevinta and Lifull, their outlook for traffic in 2021 is sanguine.

As a portal that has traditionally targeted ex-pats and is now increasingly looking to target and monetise domestic traffic in a maturing market, Frontier Digital Ventures-backed LankaPropertyWeb will be hoping that the early signs from 2021 accelerate the Sri Lankan property market's path to maturity.