Housing occupancy and tenure
Occupied and vacant housing, ownership and renting across districts.
- Records
- 314
- Vintage
- Census 2024, final report; table years vary
- Last checked
- 16 October 2026
- Published by
- GovernmentDepartment of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka
What this dataset contains
The census final report provides occupied and permanently closed or vacant housing-unit counts for every district in 2012 and 2024. Its 2024 tenure table reports shares owned by a household member, rented or leased from government or private owners, rent-free, encroached, or held under other arrangements. Tenure shares cover districts and four census sectors, plus national totals.
How it is used here
Compare vacant-unit counts across districts, examine occupied-unit growth between censuses, or compare private renting and household-member ownership by district.
What it cannot tell you
Housing units and households are different populations. Permanently closed and vacant units are one combined source category and do not indicate homes available to rent or buy. Tenure describes occupied housing arrangements, not title verification, mortgage debt, rents or housing affordability. Districts, sectors and national aggregates overlap. Tenure percentages use their own geographic denominators and are rounded; do not add them across geographies. The 2012 district closed/vacant counts sum to 686,510, three more than the printed national total of 686,507; both are retained. No vacancy rate is inferred from the occupied and combined closed/vacant counts.