A Site-Visit Checklist That Produces Documents, Not Impressions

Most site-visit checklists are about impressions. Check the ventilation. Notice the traffic at the junction. See how the light falls in the afternoon. All of that is worth doing, and none of it is evidence. A month later you will remember a feeling and be unable to reconstruct what you were told.

This checklist has a different objective: to make sure you leave the site holding things — photographs, a number copied correctly, a dated email — that still mean something when the enthusiasm has faded. Treat the visit as an exercise in collecting records, and the impressions will still form on their own.

Before you go: three things to look up

Twenty minutes at your desk changes what the visit is for. Arriving informed converts a sales presentation into a conversation about documents.

• The project on the state authority's register. Search the registration number the developer or listing quotes. Read the promoter's name, the survey numbers and the dates before anyone tells you what they are.
• The most recent quarterly update on that project page. Section 11(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 puts the duty of keeping that page current, including the quarterly status of the project, on the promoter. How recently it was touched is a fact you now know and the sales desk does not know you know.
• The developer's own website, and whether it is the developer's. Lookalike domains carrying a developer's project names and their own enquiry forms are common. Establish which site is first-party before you hand your number to any of them.

At the gate: the display board

Look for the project information board at the site entrance before you look at anything else, and photograph it whole and then in sections you can read.

What you want off it: the project name, the promoter's name, the registration number, and the name of the approving authority. Compare all four against what you read at your desk. A board that carries no registration number, or one that disagrees with the register, is the single most efficient finding available on a site visit — it takes ten seconds and it happens at the gate, before anybody has bought you a coffee.

The registration number, copied character by character

Copy it from the board or the certificate, not from a brochure and not from memory. These numbers are long, they contain slashes and repeated digits, and a single mistyped character produces a search result identical to the one a fake number produces: nothing.

Photograph it. Then read it back aloud against the photograph. Then type it into the register while you are still standing there, because a discrepancy is far easier to raise while you are on site with somebody who can answer than in an email a week later.

What to photograph, and why it matters later

Photographs are timestamped, which is what makes them evidence rather than recollection. Take more than feels necessary; you can delete later.

• The display board, in full and in readable sections.
• Any certificate you are shown. Ask before photographing; a developer with nothing to hide will say yes. If the answer is no, note that and ask for it by email instead.
• The site as it actually stands. Structure, floors completed, whether work is in progress on the day you visited. This is your own dated record of construction stage and it is the one thing no document gives you.
• The sample flat, room by room, including the fittings. Later you will compare these against the written specification and the difference is the conversation.
• The unit's floor plan as displayed, and any area figure printed next to it.
• The payment schedule and price sheet, if you are shown one on paper.

Keep them in one folder named for the project and the date. Six months and four projects later this discipline is the difference between a decision and a blur.

The sample flat: what it is and is not evidence of

A sample flat is a demonstration of space. Proportions, circulation, where light enters, whether the kitchen works, how a wardrobe fits — those transfer to the real unit and are worth studying properly.

What does not transfer is everything the eye is drawn to. Furniture is not included. Fittings, sanitaryware, kitchen counters and wardrobes in a sample flat are commonly above the contracted grade. Walls are sometimes moved for display. False ceilings and lighting are frequently additions.

So the only rigorous use of a sample flat is comparative. Photograph it, obtain the specification annexed to the agreement, and go through the two together. Ask the direct question — "which items in the sample flat are not part of the contracted specification?" — and ask for the answer in writing. It is a fair question and a well-run sales team answers it without discomfort.

Questions to ask on site, and questions to send by email

Ask on site anything a person in front of you can settle immediately, and send by email anything whose answer you might later need to produce.

The reason for the split is not suspicion. It is that a verbal answer cannot be produced later, and section 12 of the Act — which makes a promoter liable to compensate a person who advances money on the basis of an incorrect statement in a notice, advertisement or prospectus and sustains loss — operates on statements that exist in a recorded form.

What to request in writing before you leave

Say it at the desk and then send it. One email, six items, sent the same day from the address you will keep using.

1. The registration certificate for this project.
2. The sanctioned plan, and the name of the authority that approved it.
3. The floor plan for the specific unit, with its carpet area.
4. The complete specification list as it will be annexed to the agreement.
5. The payment schedule.
6. The draft agreement for sale.

Every item is one a developer selling a registered project already holds. 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, and section 11(3)(a) obliges the promoter to make those available at the time of booking. You are not asking for a favour, and the speed of the reply is itself the finding.

The four checks to run the same week

Do these while the visit is fresh, in this order.

• Register versus board. Promoter name, project name, survey numbers and dates on the authority's site against your photograph of the display board.
• Certificate versus land. Do the survey numbers on the certificate describe the site you walked on? Where a site is being built in parts, establish which part your unit is in.
• Specification versus sample flat. Your photographs against the written list, item by item. Circle every difference and ask about each.
• Entity versus entity. The promoter on the certificate, the entity in the draft agreement, and the payee on the payment instructions should be the same legal person. If they are not, ask why before anything else proceeds.

None of this requires a professional and none of it takes long. What it requires is deciding, before you go, that the purpose of the visit is to leave with records rather than with a feeling — and that a second visit is always available.

If you would rather arrive with the documents already in hand, the registrations, promoter names and survey numbers for every SUYUG project are published on the registrations page, and a visit can be arranged through the site visit page.