{"id":35835,"date":"2014-12-07T15:09:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T20:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=35835"},"modified":"2014-12-07T15:23:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T20:23:53","slug":"sri-lankas-southern-coast-from-bentota-to-hambantota-turning-into-vacation-home-patadise-for-foreigners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=35835","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka’s Southern Coast From Bentota to Hambantota Turning Into Vacation Home Paradise for Foreigners"},"content":{"rendered":"

By REBECCA BUNDHUN<\/strong><\/p>\n

GALLE, Sri Lanka<\/strong> \u2014 These days, Sri Lanka<\/strong> is often called the next Bali<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tourism has more than doubled since the 26-year civil war on this teardrop-shaped island in the Indian Ocean ended in 2009, with 1.27 million visitors arriving last year. And some of those foreigners have been buying vacation homes, especially along the island\u2019s southern coast, even though changes to property laws in 2013 made such purchases more complicated and costly.<\/p>\n

\"GALLENYT\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The shoreline near Galle, Sri Lanka. Foreigners are said to own the majority of the 110 miles of beachfront around the island\u2019s southern tip, which includes the Galle area. courtesy: Credit Chaput Franck\/Hemis.fr, via AFP<\/em><\/p>\n

For many, the decision to buy was not a snap judgment.<\/p>\n

Matthew Harragin, a retired stockbroker from Britain, and his wife, Sue, an artist, first visited the country 15 years ago on vacation.
\n
\n\u201cSri Lanka got totally into our blood,\u201d Mr. Harragin said by telephone during the couple\u2019s recent trip to Europe. \u201cThe people, everything about the place spoke to us, but at the time, of course, the war was still going so we had no conscious thoughts of ever living there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they returned after the end of the war for another vacation, and then about three years ago bought land in a coconut grove in Midigama, not far from the southern district capital of Galle and only a short distance from a surfing beach.<\/p>\n

They spent 18 months building a five-bedroom colonial-style house in wood with terra cotta tiles and polished cement floors. \u201cIt\u2019s ended up an absolute palace \u2014 much larger than we expected,\u201d Mr. Harragin said.<\/p>\n

He estimated that the house, swimming pool and the land cost a total of about 500,000 pounds, or $783,010.<\/p>\n

(While the Harragins recalled the sums in pounds, high-end homes in Sri Lanka are listed in American dollars or Sri Lankan rupees and the final transactions are in rupees.)<\/p>\n

Rapid improvements in infrastructure since the war\u2019s end have made the country\u2019s southern coast more accessible, and more appealing, to tourists and home buyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to take five hours to drive from the airport to Galle,\u201d said Kavita Devi Faiella, who moved to Sri Lanka from Australia in early 2013 to become executive assistant manager of the luxury Amangalla hotel at Galle Fort. (The fort, built in the 16th century, is a Unesco World Heritage site.)<\/p>\n

The 100-mile trip now takes less than two hours. \u201cNow with the freeways, I think that\u2019s what probably makes the biggest difference in opening up the country and making it very accessible,\u201d Ms. Faiella said.<\/p>\n

It was only a couple of years ago that Michael and Willemina Mansell came to Sri Lanka on a vacation from Qatar, where Mr. Mansell is a petroleum engineer. They decided to buy a home, and paid $650,000 for a three-bedroom colonial-style house inside the fort walls.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was built in 2006, but of course everything in the fort needs to be done in the traditional style so it looks like it\u2019s many centuries old,\u201d said Mr. Mansell, who is British.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Mansell, a Dutch artist, said a few of the house\u2019s most attractive features were its spacious roof terrace and the sea breezes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, we fell in love with the house \u2014 but we first had to fall in love with Sri Lanka,\u201d she said.\u201d \u201cSri Lanka has everything: jungles, wildlife, mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are no official tallies of property prices in Sri Lanka, but Eduard Hempel, managing director of Pearl Properties, an agency based in Galle that caters primarily to foreigners, said there had been a fivefold increase in the value of prime beach properties between 2009 and 2012.<\/p>\n

For example, he said, a house that would have sold for about $500,000 in 2009 in Talpe, one of the most desirable and expensive areas at the island\u2019s southern end, could now be worth about $2.5 million.<\/p>\n

And today, Mr. Hempel estimated, about 60 percent or 65 percent of the beachfront from Bentota to Hambantota \u2014 about 110 miles along the southern coast, including the Galle area \u2014 is owned by foreigners.<\/p>\n

Demand stalled in November 2012, when Sri Lanka announced there would be changes to its property laws the following year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe market went dead for nine months,\u201d Mr. Hempel said. \u201cWe went from having four or five potential buyers visiting a day to three or four buyers a month.\u201d<\/p>\n

But once the new directives were released in June 2013, he said, the market began to recover. \u201cIt\u2019s not as busy as it was at the end of the war, but it has been very good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The new laws, which went into effect in October, limit foreigners to 99-year leaseholds, ending the outright purchases of land that had been permitted, and added a special stamp duty of 15 percent of the leasehold price.<\/p>\n

Also, foreigners are limited to 49 percent of the shares in any local company set up to buy land; the majority must be held by a local partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is pricey, but I think that over the next three months the market will absorb it and then move on,\u201d Mr. Hempel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the laws are still more favorable to buy property in Sri Lanka than Bali or Phuket, which would be the markets we like to compare ourselves to,\u201d he added. \u201cBut we\u2019re still far cheaper \u2014 five or 10 times cheaper.\u201d courtesy: NYTimes<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By REBECCA BUNDHUN GALLE, Sri Lanka \u2014 These days, Sri Lanka is often called the next Bali. Tourism has more than doubled since the 26-year civil war on this teardrop-shaped island in the Indian Ocean ended in 2009, with 1.27 million visitors arriving last year. And some of those foreigners have been buying vacation homes, …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Sri Lanka’s Southern Coast From Bentota to Hambantota Turning Into Vacation Home Paradise for Foreigners’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35835"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35851,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835\/revisions\/35851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}