Buying a New Flat or Plot: What to Check Before You Pay

A flat or a plot is the largest thing most people ever buy from a listing, and it is usually the one they check least before money changes hands. A site visit, a brochure and a friendly sales manager, and the booking amount is paid the same afternoon — weeks before anyone reads the agreement. This checklist puts the checks in the order you will need them, so that the first payment is made after them rather than instead of them.

What should the listing already tell you?

Start with what is on the page. A property listing here has three fields of its own — Beds, Baths and Square ft — shown in the sidebar when the seller filled them in. Most do not, so the description has to carry the facts: the project name, the locality, the configuration, the area and a price.

Read the price with care. Every price on this site is shown in US dollars, and many sellers type their local-currency figure into the dollar field, so a two-bedroom flat can appear at $23,500,000. 355 live property listings show a price of a million dollars or more. Treat such a number as unknown rather than as a fact, and ask the seller for the price in dollars in your first message. A listing at $1 or with no price at all tells you the same thing: the real figure is still to come.

If the price has changed since the listing went up, a price graph appears below the description. A project whose price has been cut twice in a month is either negotiable or not selling, and both are worth knowing before the site visit.

How do you check a project's RERA registration?

In India, a developer may not advertise, book or sell units in a project until it is registered with the state’s real estate regulatory authority, and every advertisement must show the registration number and the authority’s website. Small projects are exempt — land of 500 square metres or less, or eight apartments or fewer — but anything larger needs a number.

Only 41 of the 1,136 live property listings on this site mention RERA at all, so expect to ask. When you have the number, look it up on the authority’s website yourself rather than trusting a screenshot. The project page there shows who the developer is, the approvals the project holds and the completion date the developer has registered. Check three things against what you were told:

• The developer’s name matches the company you will pay.
• The completion date matches the possession date in the sales pitch. If the salesperson says next year and the registration says four years from now, believe the registration.
• The tower or phase you are being offered is inside the registered project, not a later phase that has no registration yet.

If the seller is an agent, ask for their own RERA agent registration number too. Agents register under the same Act, and one who cannot give you a number should not be selling you anything.

What is carpet area, and why does it change the price?

Three areas get quoted for the same flat. Carpet area is the usable floor space inside the flat’s walls, the rooms you actually live in. Built-up area adds the thickness of the walls and often the balcony. Super built-up area adds a share of the lobbies, stairs, lifts and clubhouse, and it is always the largest of the three.

The Act requires prices to be based on carpet area, and the carpet area is written in the registration. Ask for it in square feet, divide the price by it, and compare projects on that number. A flat that looks cheaper per square foot on super built-up area is often the dearer one per square foot you can use.

Who are you actually buying from?

Next to every listing is the seller’s card, with their review score and a View Profile link to everything else they have listed. A profile with forty listings for twenty different projects belongs to a broker, which is fine, but it tells you that the person answering your message does not work for the developer. A profile with the same project listed fifteen times belongs to someone selling hard.

Either way, the company named on the RERA registration is the one that owes you the flat. Get the developer’s own sales office on the phone before paying anything, using contact details from the developer’s own website or the authority’s project page, not the number on the brochure you were handed.

How much can a developer ask for before the agreement?

This is where the Act protects you most, and where buyers most often give the protection away. A developer may not take more than ten per cent of the price as an advance or application fee before signing a written agreement for sale with you and registering it. If you are asked for more before an agreement exists, the request itself is the warning.

The agreement is also where your other rights live. Seventy per cent of the money buyers pay must be kept in a separate account for that project. If possession is late, you may withdraw and get a full refund with interest. Structural defects that show up within five years of possession must be fixed at no cost to you. Read the possession date, the penalty for delay and the payment schedule before you sign, and have a lawyer read them if the amount matters to you — it does.

Pay by bank transfer to the account named in the agreement, never in cash and never to a broker’s personal account, and keep every receipt. The same rule applies here as anywhere on classifieds: use the payment methods that leave you a record.

What to check on a plot before you pay

A plot has no building to inspect, so the paperwork is everything. Ask for the approved layout plan and its approval reference, and check it with the authority that issued it, whether that is the town planning department or the local development authority. A plot in an unapproved layout can be cheap for a reason: roads, water and building permission may never come.

Then ask for the title documents, the chain of previous sale deeds, and an encumbrance certificate showing that no loan or claim is registered against the land. These are the documents a lawyer needs to see, and a seller who will not show them before you pay has told you what you need to know.

When to walk away

Most listings are honest, and a checked project is a good one to buy into. Walk away, though, from any of these:

1. No RERA number for a project that needs one, or a number that belongs to a different project.
2. A request for more than ten per cent before a registered agreement.
3. “Assured returns” or a buy-back promise that is not written into the agreement.
4. Payment asked in cash, or into an account that is not the developer’s.
5. Pressure to book today because “the last unit at this price” goes tonight.

Those are also the warning signs of a classifieds scam in any category. If a listing turns out to be one, use Flag this ad at the top of the listing page so the next buyer is not the one who pays. A good project will still be there next week, after you have checked it.