What Changes at Possession: The Handover Sequence

Buyers plan for possession as a date and then meet it as a sequence. Over a handful of weeks the building changes hands, the apartment changes hands, several recurring costs begin, a five-year clock starts, and the legal title follows behind all of it. Knowing the order is what stops the whole thing feeling like paperwork happening to you.

The order of events, from occupancy certificate to keys

The sequence below is the one the central statute describes. Local practice adds steps; it does not reorder these.

Note what is not on that list: a promised date. No date appears here because none is asserted anywhere on this site for any project. What your agreement for sale states as the date for handing over possession is a term of your contract under section 13(2), and that is the document to read.

What an intimation of possession is, and what it starts

An intimation, or offer, of possession is a communication from the promoter that the apartment is ready to be handed over. It is not the same as possession, which is your act, recorded by the possession letter.

Three things typically begin at the intimation rather than at the keys, and each is worth confirming against your own agreement.

• The final demand. The last tranche of the payment schedule usually falls due on offer of possession.
• The window to take possession. Section 19(10) requires an allottee to take physical possession within two months of the occupancy certificate issued for the apartment.
• Maintenance liability, in many agreements. Where the agreement says maintenance runs from the offer of possession, waiting to collect the keys does not pause the meter.

An intimation that arrives before the occupancy certificate exists is an intimation about a building that has not yet been permitted for occupation. That is the question to ask first, and it is answerable with a document.

The possession letter and the handover kit

The possession letter records a named allottee, a specific apartment and the day possession was handed over. It is a handover record, not a certificate and not title. Read it for any sentence recording that the apartment is accepted without defects, or that all claims stand settled — those change your position, and everything else in it is descriptive.

The kit that should arrive with it: the occupancy certificate covering your block; the final statement of account reconciled against the payment schedule; the approved plan and the specification schedule annexed to your agreement; your signed and acknowledged snag list; warranty documents for fittings and equipment; the maintenance terms and the basis of any deposit or corpus collected; and utility meter numbers with readings taken on the day.

Photograph every room, and both meters, on the day. The file dates are the cheapest evidence you will ever collect.

The day maintenance liability moves, and the day tax liability moves

These are two different days, set by two different documents, and conflating them is the commonest budgeting error at handover.

Maintenance begins on the day named in your agreement for sale. Ask on what basis it is computed and what the deposit or corpus collected at handover is held for. Until the association is formed and the common areas are transferred, the promoter or its appointee runs the community and holds those funds, which is why the terms should be in writing now rather than reconstructed at association handover.

Property tax follows the local authority's own assessment process for the unit, which begins once the building is lawfully occupiable and the unit is on the record. In Karnataka this runs through the khata and the assessment maintained by whichever body has jurisdiction over the land — a municipal corporation, a municipal council or a panchayat with the planning authority above it. Getting the unit assessed and the khata into your name is an owner's task, and starting it late is how the first year gets expensive in arrears rather than in rates.

Utility connections: moving the accounts into your name

• Note the electricity meter number and reading on the possession day, in writing and in a photograph, and lodge the name transfer with the distribution utility promptly.
• Confirm whether the supply is the permanent connection or a construction-stage supply. They are not the same, and the difference shows up in tariff and reliability.
• Do the same for water where the unit is separately metered, and establish who bills for treated and recycled water within the community.
• Ask what the sanctioned load for the apartment is, and which circuits sit on the standby supply.
• Keep the first bill in each name — it is the document that proves the account moved on the day you say it did.

The defect liability period, and how a defect must be notified

Section 14(3) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 provides that where any structural defect, or any other defect in workmanship, quality or provision of services, or any other obligation of the promoter as per the agreement for sale, is brought to the promoter's notice within five years from the date of handing over possession, it is the promoter's duty to rectify it without further charge within thirty days; and where the promoter fails to do so, the aggrieved allottee is entitled to appropriate compensation in the manner provided under the Act.

Four practical readings follow.

• The clock starts at handing over of possession — the date on the possession letter. That is one more reason the date stated on it should be the day you actually took the keys.
• It covers far more than cracks. Workmanship, quality, provision of services and any other obligation under the agreement for sale are all inside it, which makes the specification schedule annexed to your agreement the standard you are entitled to.
• Notice must be given. A conversation on site is not notice. Write, email, number the item, photograph it, and keep the acknowledgement.
• Rectification is without further charge. A quotation in response to a notice under this section is the wrong response to it.

Section 14(1) sits behind all of this: the sanctioned plans, layout plans and specifications approved by the competent authority may not be altered without the previous consent of the allottee in respect of that apartment, and the section prescribes the consent required for alterations to the project itself.

Transfer of common areas, and the association's role

Section 17(1) requires the promoter to execute a registered conveyance deed in favour of the allottee along with the undivided proportionate title in the common areas to the association of allottees, to hand over physical possession of the apartment to the allottee and the common areas to the association, and to hand over the other title documents — within the period specified under the local laws, and in the absence of a local law, within three months from the date of issue of the occupancy certificate.

Section 11(4)(f) makes enabling the formation of that association the promoter's duty. In Karnataka the ownership mechanics of the shared parts sit in the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act, 1972, whose section 6 provides that each apartment owner is entitled to an undivided interest in the common areas and facilities in the percentage expressed in the Declaration.

Until the transfer is done, the community is being run on your behalf by somebody else. That is normal and temporary; it should also be documented, because the association will inherit both the assets and the questions.

What to do in the first week, and what to hold back

• File the utility name transfers and the khata application. These are slow, and they start on your initiative.
• Re-inspect the snag list against the serial numbers and photograph each rectified item.
• Keep the possession letter, the occupancy certificate copy, the final account and the snag acknowledgement together. This set is the evidence for everything under section 14(3).
• Do not sign a no-dues or full-and-final acknowledgement while items on the snag list are open.
• Do not begin interior work that covers a recorded defect until it has been rectified and re-photographed. Boxing in a leak transfers it to you.
• Ask when the conveyance deed will be executed and when the association is to be formed, and get the answer in writing.

The full purchase sequence, stage by stage with the document that settles each, is in the buyer guide. What arrives after booking is answered on the FAQ page, and each registered project's regulator, promoter name and registration validity is transcribed on the registrations page.