Why the Price on a Listing Site Differs From the Developer’s, and Which One Is Real

Look up a project on four listing sites and you will often find four different prices, none of which is the number the developer would give you. This is confusing enough that many buyers assume somebody is hiding something. Usually nobody is. The figures were simply assembled by different people from different inputs, and most of those people never spoke to the developer.

Here is how a listing price gets made, what a headline figure leaves out, and which number the transaction actually runs on.

Where a listing price comes from

When a developer has not supplied a figure — which is the usual case — an aggregator's number comes from one or more of these.

• A broker's estimate. Someone who sells in the area supplies a figure from memory or from a recent deal.
• A resale asking price. An owner's asking figure for a unit in the project, which is a seller's aspiration rather than a transacted price and is unrelated to what the developer charges for fresh inventory.
• An old launch figure. A number from an earlier phase, carried forward without a date on it.
• A rate multiplied by an area. This one produces the largest errors, because the area measure used is often not the one the rate was quoted against.
• An algorithm. Some figures are interpolated from nearby projects, and the page will describe the result as an estimate in text small enough that nobody reads it.

None of these inputs is illegitimate. What they have in common is that the developer is not the source, and nobody at the developer has checked the result.

Three different numbers that all look like "the price"

Before comparing anything, establish which of these you are holding, because they are not comparable to each other.

A per-square-foot rate is a rate, and it is meaningless until you know which area it is per square foot of. Carpet area is defined at section 2(k) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016; built-up and super built-up areas have no statutory definition, so the same money divided by three different denominators produces three very different-looking rates for one home.

An all-inclusive figure claims to bundle the components together — but which components? Two all-inclusive numbers from two sellers frequently include different things.

A "starting from" figure is the lowest unit in the project: usually the smallest configuration, on the least desirable floor, with the least desirable facing, and often no longer available. It is a real number about a real unit and it tells you almost nothing about the unit you want.

What a headline number usually excludes

The gap between a headline figure and what a purchase actually costs is not a trick; it is a set of components that are separately quantified and often separately payable. The list is worth knowing before you compare anything.

Notice how many rows are set by somebody other than the developer. That is the second reason a developer is cautious about publishing one all-in number: several of the components are not the developer's to quote, and some of them depend on your circumstances rather than on the property.

Why aggregators disagree with one another

Once you know the inputs, the disagreement stops being mysterious. One site carries a resale asking price, another an old launch figure, a third a rate applied to a different area measure, a fourth an estimate. Each is internally consistent and none is wrong on its own terms. They are simply answers to different questions.

The same mechanism produces disagreement on the non-price fields too — status, jurisdiction, configuration counts, registration state. A page assembled without contacting the developer will contain whatever was available when it was assembled, and it is rarely revisited afterwards. The practical rule follows directly: use listing sites to discover that a project exists, and a primary source to learn anything about it.

Charges set by authorities

Some components are fixed by the State rather than by anyone selling to you. They vary by state, by the nature of the instrument and sometimes by the buyer's circumstances, and they change when the State changes them.

This site does not print those figures, and it is worth saying why rather than leaving it as an omission. A rate published on a marketing page becomes stale silently and a reader has no way to tell. The correct source is the department that levies the charge, or the sub-registrar's office where the instrument will be registered, at the time you register — and it is a question your advocate answers as part of the transaction anyway.

Treat any seller who quotes such a figure as fixed and final as having told you something about how they handle facts generally.

What a developer can commit to, and when

A developer can commit to a price for a specific unit, addressed to a specific buyer, at a specific time, in a cost sheet. That is the artefact to ask for, and it is normal to ask for it early.

What follows the cost sheet is the agreement for sale, which carries the consideration and the payment schedule. Section 13(1) of the Act bars a promoter from accepting more than ten per cent of the cost of the apartment as an advance before that written agreement is entered into and registered — so the sequence, correctly run, puts the documented number before the substantial payment rather than after it.

How to ask for a cost sheet, and what it should itemise

One email, and it should name the unit rather than the project.

"Please send a cost sheet for unit [X], tower [Y], itemising every component, with the area measure each rate is calculated against, and marking which items are payable to you and which to other parties."

A complete cost sheet names the unit, states its carpet area, itemises each component separately, shows what is payable to the developer and what is payable to others, and carries a date. If it arrives as a single number, ask for the breakdown; if it arrives without an area measure, ask which area the rate applies to. Both are reasonable requests and both are answered in a line.

Which number governs

In order of authority: the consideration in your registered agreement for sale; then the cost sheet issued to you for your unit; then anything else. A listing price and a brochure range are not in this hierarchy at all — they are indications, useful for orientation and useless for arithmetic.

So when four sites disagree, the answer is not to work out which is closest. It is to notice that none of them is on the list, and to ask the developer for the document that is.

The configurations and areas SUYUG publishes for each project, with the registration each belongs to, are on the projects page, and what a purchase involves at each stage is set out in the buyer guide.