Attached
Land and landed properties are fundamental ingredients for the sodo-economic development of
a country. In any devdopment project, land and buildings are essentially a part of it as either
among its inputs or in the process or among the outputs of the project. On the other hand, land
is an inevitable investment or/and consumption purchase of all individuals, families,
organizations and nations. Hence, in a market economy, land and property market is supposed
to play a live and a vibrant role instead to be a silent or unreliable sector. However, research on
land and property markets in various context raises debatable questions over some concepts
associated with land and property markets such as “informality of markets”, “immaturity of
markets”, “land as dead capital”, property crimes”, “lack of property democracy”, “unaffordable
land and property prices”, “lack of professional engagement” etc. Even though there are several
debatable problems in global land markets, it is clear that all such problems are interrelated and
collectively influence the price formation resulting unprofessionally decided property prices in
the market disrupting all the socio-economic goals of such (.nations. Most of developing cities,
including the city of Colombo, with poorly organized land and property markets have been facing
this problem as a vicious cycle. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyze the role of the property
markets in general and issue in connections with the price formation of land and landed properties
in Colombo in particular. This theoretical discussion is underpinned with some practical cases
and life experience of authors. At the end, some recommendations are presented for a moderate
situation against the problem.
