How to Verify a Builder Before You Pay: the Eight-Document Method

Ask a room of buyers how they picked their developer and you will hear about the sample flat, the finish on the lobby stone, how long the brand has existed, and whether a cousin bought there and was happy. Every one of those is a real observation. None of them is a document, and none of them survives contact with a dispute.

The question "is this builder trustworthy" cannot be answered, because it is not a question about the world. The question "which of these eight documents can this builder produce, and how quickly" can be answered in a fortnight, by post and email, without leaving your desk. This is that method. It applies to us as much as to anyone, and the last section says how we would answer it about ourselves.

Why the reassurance question is the wrong one

Reassurance is generated by the seller. Documents are generated by third parties — a regulatory authority, a planning authority, a sub-registrar, a bank, an auditor. That is the whole distinction and it is worth holding on to. A brochure is written by the person selling. An occupancy certificate is written by a municipal officer with no commercial interest in whether you buy.

So the method below is not eight ways of feeling better. It is eight documents, each issued by somebody other than the seller, each of which is either produced or is not.

Document 1 — the project registration certificate

Under section 3(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 a promoter cannot advertise, market, book, sell or offer for sale any apartment or plot in a project without first registering it with the state authority, subject to the exemptions in section 3(2). The authority grants that registration under section 5 and issues a certificate.

Ask for the certificate itself, not the number. The number can be typed into a listing by anybody. The certificate carries the promoter's legal name, the land the registration covers, the date it was granted and the date it runs to — fields no listing reproduces. Then verify what you were given against the authority's public register, which section 34(b) requires the authority to maintain and publish for public viewing.

Two failure modes are common and both are visible from the certificate. The first is a certificate for a different phase of the same site. The second is a project described as "approval in progress" while holding a live registration, or the reverse — copy that describes a status the register does not.

Document 2 — the survey numbers, matched to the land you stood on

A registration does not attach to a name or to a marketing address. It attaches to specific parcels of land, identified by survey number and village. The certificate prints them.

Your job is to satisfy yourself that the land you walked on is the land on the certificate. That means reading the survey numbers off the certificate, then asking to see the same numbers on the title documents and on the sanctioned plan. Where a site spans several parcels, every parcel being sold should appear. An extra number nobody can explain, or a missing one, is the single most consequential discrepancy in this list, because it can mean part of what you were shown is outside the registration entirely.

Document 3 — the sanctioned plan and the layout approval

Two questions here, and they are different. Which authority approved this, and what exactly did it approve?

On the corridor around Bengaluru the answer varies by jurisdiction: a project inside the city corporation's limits is approved by a different body from one under a planning authority or a panchayat. Ask which body issued the approval, then ask for the approval reference and the drawings it covers. Section 14(1) of the Act binds the promoter to develop the project in accordance with the sanctioned plans, layout plans and specifications as approved by the competent authority, and section 14(2) restricts alterations after that.

The point of holding the drawings is not that you will read them like an architect. It is that the thing you were sold — a tower height, a clubhouse, a road width, an open space — is either on the approved drawing or it is an intention.

Document 4 — the title documents

India registers documents, not title. What exists is a chain of instruments running back through earlier owners, and the current sale is one more link. Ask for the mother deed and the subsequent deeds, and ask who examined them.

Most developers have had a title opinion prepared by an advocate, and most lenders funding the project have had their own done. Ask whether one exists and whether you may see it. Then have your own advocate read the chain. This is the one item on the list where paying a professional a modest fee to read the papers is not optional, because it is the only item where the defect can be invisible on every other document.

Document 5 — the encumbrance certificate

An encumbrance certificate is issued by the sub-registrar and lists the registered transactions recorded against a property for a period you specify. It is how you find a mortgage, an earlier sale, a lease or a charge that nobody mentioned.

Two cautions, both important. It reflects what was registered at that office, in that period, against those survey numbers — so the period you request and the survey numbers you quote determine what you get back. And it does not show what was never registered: an unregistered agreement, an oral arrangement, a family claim not yet in court. It is a strong negative check and a weak positive one. Nothing on it is good news; something on it is a question.

Document 6 — the separate account, and your right to ask

Section 4(2)(l)(D) of the Act obliges a promoter to deposit seventy per cent of the amounts realised for a project from allottees into a separate account maintained in a scheduled bank, to cover the cost of construction and the land cost, and to withdraw from it only in proportion to the completion of the project — with each withdrawal certified by an engineer, an architect and a chartered accountant in practice.

You cannot audit that account. You can ask three things: which bank the separate account is with, whether the professional certifications for withdrawals are being obtained, and whether the quarterly project updates on the authority's register are current. Section 11(1) requires the promoter to keep the project's page on the authority's web portal updated, including the status of the project on a quarterly basis. An empty or year-stale project page on a live registration is a fact you can observe yourself, and it is one of the more telling ones.

Document 7 — completion and occupancy certificates on delivered work

For any project the developer says it has delivered, ask for the occupancy certificate. Section 2(zf) of the Act defines it as the certificate issued by the competent authority permitting occupation of a building, with provision for civic infrastructure such as water, sanitation and electricity; section 2(q) defines the completion certificate as the one certifying that the project was developed according to the sanctioned plan, layout plan and specifications. Section 11(4)(b) puts the duty to obtain them on the promoter.

"Handed over" and "occupied" are not the same as "certified". Families live in buildings that hold no occupancy certificate, and the consequences land on the residents rather than on the developer who left. A developer with a genuine delivery record can produce these in an afternoon; that is the test.

Document 8 — the corporate record and the audited accounts

The promoter on the certificate is a legal entity, and that entity has a public record at the Ministry of Corporate Affairs: incorporation date, registered office, directors, filing history, and charges registered against it. Any member of the public can pull it. Look for three things — that the entity on the certificate is the one you were told about, that it files, and that its directors are the people the developer says run it.

Audited accounts are a fair ask from an entity taking a large advance from you, and the answer is informative either way. A developer that shares them has decided its books survive being read. A developer that declines has told you where its confidence ends. Neither answer is disqualifying on its own. Both are data.

What each evasion actually means

The document you are refused is more informative than the eight you are given, and the shape of the refusal usually names the problem.

When to walk

Not on the first evasion. Sales teams are often simply uninformed, and a request routed to the right desk usually produces the paper. Walk when the pattern repeats after the request has reached someone senior, when a written request is answered verbally twice, or when a document is promised for after a payment that would be difficult to recover. The sequence — document, then money — is the protection. Section 13(1) of the Act encodes exactly that sequence by barring a promoter from taking more than ten per cent of the cost of an apartment as an advance before a written agreement for sale is entered into and registered.

How we would answer these about ourselves

Every registration SUYUG holds is transcribed on the registrations page — number, authority, the promoter as the certificate names it, the survey numbers, and the dates the certificate carries — so that each one can be checked against the regulator's register rather than taken from us. The promoter field on those certificates reads SUYUG CONSTRUCTIONS, which is not the trading name on the hoarding; that is normal, and the reason it is published rather than smoothed over is that a buyer running this method would otherwise find a mismatch and have to guess at it.

Some SUYUG projects are announced and not yet registered. Those are marked as such and are not offered for sale, because section 3(1) of the Act does not permit it. A developer's own list of what it may not yet sell is a more useful document than most of its marketing.

The vocabulary in this piece — encumbrance certificate, mother deed, occupancy certificate, sanctioned plan — is defined with sources in the property glossary, and the sequence a purchase actually runs in is set out step by step in the buyer guide.