Two figures came out of the same Central Bank of Sri Lanka release for the first quarter of 2026. Taken one at a time, they support opposite stories.
The new condominium price index for Colombo District was up 18.5% on the same quarter a year earlier. Over those same three months, condominium sales volume was down 15.2%, a figure reported by EconomyNext from the Central Bank’s data.
Fewer sales, at higher recorded prices. That is a thin market. It is not the same thing as a strong one, and the distinction decides how a seller should price.
An index can only record what completed
Begin with what the number is. It tracks prices for new condominiums in Colombo District, quarter by quarter, and the survey behind it has been published since the third quarter of 2017.
Every index built this way shares one limitation. It measures sales that happened. A property listed at an ambitious price that never found a buyer leaves no mark in it at all, not a low reading, no reading. So when volume falls, the index is describing a smaller and more selective slice of the market than it described a year before.
An 18.5% rise therefore does not mean an arbitrary Colombo condominium is worth 18.5% more than it was. It means the units that changed hands went at higher prices than the units that changed hands a year earlier. Which units those were is a separate question, and the Central Bank answers part of it in the same release.
The middle of the market thinned first
The breakdown by price band is the part of the figures that does the most work for a seller.
| Price band | Transactions, 2026 Q1 |
|---|---|
| LKR 25m to 50m | Fell |
| LKR 50m to 70m | Rose slightly |
| LKR 75m and above | Rose slightly |
Activity did not fall evenly. It fell in the 25 to 50 million band, while the two bands above it held and edged up.
That has an arithmetic consequence quite separate from any individual property becoming more valuable. A market that loses transactions at one end and gains a few at the other will report a higher average on the change of mix alone. Some of the headline is composition, not appreciation.
For a seller this is the practical heart of the release. If your property sits in the band that lost activity, the headline is not describing the part of the market you are selling into. It is describing somebody else’s.
What thinness does to an asking price
Where buyers are plentiful at every level, an ambitious asking price costs a few weeks. Somebody eventually stretches to it. Where they are not, there is no depth behind the price to absorb the stretch, and the cost is counted in months.
Two things follow from that, and neither is a forecast.
Time on the market becomes the signal worth watching. With volumes down, an offer arriving slowly is ordinary. A property drawing no viewings at all is telling you something no published index can.
And a correction made late does less work than the same price set at the start. Everyone who considered the property while it was new has already formed a view of it, and with fewer buyers moving there are fewer people behind them to form a fresh one.
Two things the headline will not tell you
It will not tell you about houses. The series is condominiums, and the Central Bank’s land reporting is a separate publication on a separate schedule. Land and condominiums are not the same market sets out why one is not a proxy for the other.
It will not tell you about anywhere else, either. This is Colombo District data, whatever label it acquires afterwards. What the district figures cover, and what they leave out covers the rest of the country, and what to price on where no series exists.
And it is a gross figure, not a net one
What a seller keeps is not what an index moves.
Since June 2026, when the Inland Revenue (Amendment) Act No. 11 of 2026 was enacted, resident individuals and partnerships have paid 15% on gains from realising investment assets, in place of the 10% that had applied from April 2018. A principal residence can fall outside the charge where it was owned continuously for the three years before disposal and lived in for at least two of those three. When the Inland Revenue Department’s own capital gains page was checked on 9 August 2026 it still displayed the earlier rate, which is a good reason to work from the Act rather than from the page.
Stamp duty falls on the buyer in a land sale. It runs at 4%, and it is charged not on the agreed price as such but on whichever figure is greater, that price, or the assessment the Provincial Department of Revenue holds. It matters to a seller anyway, because it forms part of what a buyer weighs when deciding what a property is worth to them. The stamp duty guide covers that side in full.
A1 is a property agency, not a law firm or a tax practice. None of the above is advice on your position, and a notary or a qualified tax adviser should confirm it before you rely on any figure.
How to use a published figure properly
Three habits make statistics like these useful rather than decorative.
Quote the date alongside the number. This is 2026 Q1 data and the survey is quarterly, so a percentage repeated in a listing description two years from now is a liability rather than a credential.
Check the coverage before applying it. District, property type and period all have to match the property in front of you, and usually at least one of them does not.
Then prefer evidence to averages. What prices a property is the small set of genuinely comparable sales near it, the stock currently competing with it for the same buyer, and how long that stock has been sitting unsold. An index is a district-wide average built for economists. A price is a local argument built for one property.
The next step
If you are weighing a sale, the useful conversation is not about the index at all. It is about your street, your building, your price band, and what has actually moved near you in the last few months. A1 will put that evidence in front of you as a market appraisal, and will say plainly where the figure you have in mind is not supported by it, the part of the job that costs an agency instructions and saves an owner months.
That appraisal is a marketing judgement, not a formal valuation. Where a formal one is required, it is a chartered valuer’s work rather than an agency’s, and we will refer you rather than produce something that resembles it.