First-Time Buyer, in Sequence: The Order These Decisions Have to Happen In

First-time buyers are usually told what to do. They are much less often told in what order, and that is the part that costs money. Almost every expensive mistake in a first purchase is a step taken in the wrong sequence — a token paid before the encumbrance certificate was read, a shortlist built before a lender said what it would lend, an agreement signed before anyone checked the registration.

None of the steps below is difficult. The order is the whole content.

Why sequence beats effort

Each step in a purchase makes the next one cheaper to reverse or more expensive to reverse. Done in order, the irreversible steps arrive last, by which point everything you would have wanted to know is already known. Done out of order, you find yourself deciding whether to walk away from money you have already paid — which is not a decision anybody makes well.

So the test for the order below is simple: at every stage, what does this step let me walk away from cheaply?

Step one: establish your ceiling with a lender, not with a calculator

An online calculator tells you what an instalment would be on numbers you typed. A lender tells you what it will actually lend you, which is a different thing arrived at from your income documents, your existing obligations and your credit record.

• Get your credit record in order first. Disputes and stale entries take weeks to correct and they change the answer.
• Assemble the file once and reuse it: identity and address proof, income proof, bank statements, and the employment or business documents your lender's own checklist names.
• Ask the lender for the ceiling and for the conditions attached to it, in writing. A sanction is conditional and time-limited, not a transfer.
• Ask which authority's caps apply to the loan-to-value on your case. Those caps are set by the Reserve Bank of India and change by circular — read the current figure from the regulator or from the lender, not from an article.

Doing this first also tells you your own contribution, which is the number that actually constrains a first purchase.

Step two: fix the non-negotiables before you look at anything

Write down, before the first site visit, the small number of things that would make you decline a home you liked. Configuration, floor, jurisdiction, whether you are willing to buy under construction, and the outer limit of your own contribution.

This step looks soft and is not. A list written before you have seen anything is a list you wrote while you were still objective, and it is the only defence against the very good afternoon that follows a very good show flat.

Step three: check the register before the site visit, not after

Section 3(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 prohibits a promoter from advertising, marketing, booking, selling or offering for sale, or inviting persons to purchase in any manner, any plot, apartment or building in a real estate project without registering the project with the Authority.

That single sentence gives a first-time buyer a free filter that costs nothing and takes minutes. Look the project up on the regulator's own register and check four things: that the registration exists; that the promoter's name on the register is the entity you are dealing with; that the land — survey numbers, village, taluk — matches what is being shown to you; and that the registration is valid rather than lapsed.

Do this before the visit, because the point of a filter is to save the visit. A project you cannot find on the register is a conversation to have before the drive, not after.

Step four: the documents to read before any money moves

Section 19(1) of the Act entitles an allottee to obtain information relating to the sanctioned plans and layout plans along with the specifications, as approved by the competent authority. Ask for the set, and read it — or have it read.

Engage your own advocate for the title review rather than relying on the seller's. It is the cheapest professional fee in the entire transaction and the only one that is genuinely on your side of the table.

Step five: the token — the smallest payment with the largest downside

A token or booking amount is small relative to the purchase and enormous relative to your leverage, because paying it converts you from someone deciding into someone committed.

• Pay it only after step four, never as a way of holding a unit while you do step four.
• Get a receipt naming the exact unit, the amount, and the terms on which it is refundable. "Refundable" said aloud is not a term.
• Pay by a traceable banking channel to the entity named on the registration, not to an individual and not to a differently-named company.
• Keep the payment within the statutory cap described in the next step. Nothing obliges you to pay up to it.

Step six: the agreement for sale, and the cap that precedes it

Section 13(1) of the Act provides that a promoter shall not accept a sum more than ten per cent of the cost of the apartment, plot or building as an advance payment or an application fee, from a person, without first entering into a written agreement for sale with that person and registering that agreement for sale under any law for the time being in force.

Section 13(2) requires that agreement to be in the prescribed form and to specify the particulars of development, the specifications, the dates and manner of payment, the date on which possession is to be handed over, and the rates of interest payable by either side on default.

Read four things in the draft before signing: the payment schedule and whether its milestones are verifiable by someone standing on the site; the default interest clause and whether it runs both ways at the prescribed rate; the carpet area as defined in section 2(k), for your exact unit; and the date for handing over possession, which is a term of your contract rather than a marketing statement.

Section 12 sits behind all of it, fixing liability where a person makes an advance or a deposit on the basis of information in a notice, advertisement or prospectus and sustains a loss because that information was incorrect.

Step seven: registration, disbursement and the handover clock

From here the sequence is largely administrative, and each item has an owner.

• Registration of the instrument at the sub-registrar's office with jurisdiction over the property. Stamp duty and registration fees are payable at this point; the rates are notified by the State and should be read from the department that publishes them rather than from a summary.
• Tax deduction at source by the buyer where the transaction crosses the threshold in section 194-IA of the Income-tax Act, 1961, deposited and reported using Form 26QB. This is the buyer's obligation, not the seller's.
• Staged disbursement of the loan against construction milestones, with the lender verifying each stage. Give the lender the payment schedule early so its stages and the developer's are the same stages.
• Occupancy certificate — section 11(4)(b) makes obtaining it, and making it available to allottees, the promoter's responsibility.
• Possession — section 19(10) requires an allottee to take physical possession within two months of the occupancy certificate issued for the apartment. Inspect, record defects in writing, then sign.
• Conveyance and common areas — section 17(1) requires a registered conveyance deed in your favour along with the undivided proportionate title in the common areas to the association of allottees.
• Defect liability — section 14(3) gives five years from handing over of possession, with rectification due within thirty days of notice. Notice means a document.

The three points where walking away is cheap

Before the site visit, after the register check, walking away costs an afternoon. After reading the documents in step four, it costs an advocate's fee. After the token, it costs the token, and whatever the receipt says about refundability.

After the registered agreement for sale, it stops being cheap. That is not an argument against signing; it is an argument for having done steps three and four first, so that the signature is the end of the diligence rather than the start of it.

The order, in one line each

1. Find out what a lender will actually lend you, and what your own contribution has to be.
2. Write down what would make you say no, before you have seen anything.
3. Check the project on the regulator's register — promoter, land, validity.
4. Read the registration, the approvals, the title chain, the encumbrance certificate and the draft agreement.
5. Pay a token, within the cap, against a receipt that names the unit and the terms.
6. Sign and register the agreement for sale, in the prescribed form, after reading the payment schedule and the carpet area.
7. Register the instrument, meet the tax obligations, disburse in stages, and take possession against the occupancy certificate.

The same sequence, with the document that settles each stage, is set out in the buyer guide. The order in which SUYUG's own process runs is answered on the FAQ page, and each registered project's number, regulator, promoter name and validity is transcribed from the certificate on the registrations page.