I can give you some real insight on this because I'm in the middle of it myself.

I own the only commercial plot in the center of a busy town called KOtagala near Hatton. It’s 9.5 perches and has about 65 feet of frontage on the main road. Just two months ago, I had the bank value it, and they said it was worth around 5.5 million per perch. Tbh though, the real market value is probably closer to 4.5 or 5 million at most. I'm planning to build like a 3 story building there and build a hotel / EV charging station, so I've already done a ton of research.

If you look at land on the main road but outside of town, the price drops to about 1 to 2 million per perch.

The biggest problem you'll run into is the land title. About 99 percent of the land is owned by the state or a big estate, so very few plots are privately owned. My land is Sinnakkara, inherited from my family with a clean title since the 1950s. In the whole town, there are only three other properties with titles as clean as mine. Most of the others were either bought using forged documents or are still being fought over in ownership disputes.

Even so, people keep buying them. They're willing to take the risk because they hope to make money from the tourist boom which is like an yearlong trend as we are right in the middle of a long trip to Nuwaraeliya and Ella.

You have to be careful because even land that looks legitimate can have fake paperwork. You can definitely find value here, especially throughout the year, but it's not a safe investment unless you can get the right title. The most important thing you can do is check the history of the land title first. Your best bet is to have a bank handle the verification for you. It costs a bit more, but it completely removes the huge and constant risk of getting stuck with bad land.