How to buy a home in Bengaluru

Answer it with the paperwork rather than with a reassurance — and the test is the same test for any developer, however old. Check that the promoter named on the RERA certificate is the same entity named on your agreement. Read the survey numbers off the certificate and match them to the land you were shown. Ask for the separate project account required by section 4(2)(l)(D) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, into which seventy per cent of what allottees pay has to go. Ask for the commencement certificate. And read the promoter's own quarterly filings, which section 11(1) requires to be kept on the Authority's web page for the project.

Every one of those either exists or does not, which makes them better questions than how long a company has been trading. We publish the test rather than claim to pass it.

Six, by name. The encumbrance certificate from the Sub-Registrar with jurisdiction over the land. The mother deed and the chain of registered deeds behind it. The current khata, in Karnataka, or patta in Tamil Nadu, with the tax-paid receipts. The sanctioned layout or building plan. The land-conversion order permitting non-agricultural use. And the commencement certificate.

Each of these either exists or it does not, which makes them far better questions than asking whether a project is approved. Every one is a document a promoter can be asked for by name rather than as a courtesy, and a promoter who will not produce one has told you something useful.

Eight, and each has a section of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 behind it. The carpet area, which is the only area figure the Act defines (s.2(k)). The date of possession declared in the agreement. The payment milestones. Interest for delay, which runs both ways — the promoter's liability under s.18, yours under ss.19(6) and 19(7). The five-year defect liability (s.14(3)). What the promoter may alter in the sanctioned plans and specifications after you sign (s.14(2)). Transfer of the promoter's rights and liabilities to a third party (s.15). And the forum for a dispute (s.31).

This is the document that governs everything afterwards, and it is the one most often signed unread. Read the promoter's obligations as carefully as your own.

Seven stages, in this order: fix the budget before the shortlist; decide the configuration from floor plans rather than photographs; shortlist projects rather than listings; verify the paperwork before any money moves; visit the site more than once; book and read the agreement for sale; register the deed and then take possession.

Each stage on this page names the document or the section of the Act that settles it rather than a timeline. No more than ten per cent of the cost may be taken before a written agreement for sale is entered into and registered (s.13(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016); the deed is registered before the Sub-Registrar with jurisdiction over the property under the Registration Act, 1908; and possession is taken against the occupancy certificate for your block. Registration and possession are two different events, and it is worth keeping them apart in your own plan.

For a single applicant: PAN, a photo identity, an address proof, photographs and the payment instrument. PAN is not optional paperwork — section 139A of the Income-tax Act, 1961, read with rule 114B of the Income-tax Rules, 1962, requires it to be quoted on the sale or purchase of immovable property above the value prescribed in that rule.

For a joint booking, the same set for every applicant, because every applicant is named on the allotment, in the agreement for sale and in the sale deed. An applicant living abroad should expect to add a passport and an OCI card where one applies, together with the particulars of the account the funds are coming from. The exchange-control position on that account is a question for your own advisor and not for the party selling you the home.

Four sets, and they are the same four at every lender. Identity and address proof with PAN. Income proof — salary slips and Form 16, or returns and financials if you are self-employed — with bank statements. Employment or business proof. And the property set: the agreement for sale, the approved plan, the khata or patta, the encumbrance certificate and the tax-paid receipts.

Where the project is not already on that lender's approved list, the lender will also want the developer's project papers. Ask your own lender for its checklist before assembling anything: the four sets are constant, the exact list inside each is not, and no page written months earlier can tell you what a particular branch will ask for.

Not more than ten per cent. Section 13(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 bars a promoter from accepting more than ten per cent of the cost of the apartment, plot or building as an advance payment or an application fee without first entering into a written agreement for sale and registering it.

Two things follow that are worth being clear about. The ten per cent is a ceiling on what may be collected before that point, not a booking amount anyone is entitled to ask for. And the trigger is registration of the agreement, not its signing — an unregistered agreement does not unlock the rest. If you are asked for more before a registered agreement exists, that section is the one to quote back.

No — the occupancy certificate is the event the clock runs from, not a formality that catches up afterwards.

Obtaining the completion or occupancy certificate and making it available to allottees is the promoter's obligation under section 11(4)(b) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016. Section 19(10) then requires you to take physical possession within two months of the occupancy certificate being issued. The certificate is what starts that two months; without one, there is no clock and no certified building.

Taking possession before it exists means occupying a building the competent authority has not certified as fit for occupation, which can leave utility connections, insurance and any later resale on unstable ground. Ask to see the certificate itself, not a reference to it in a letter.

For a plot in Krishnagiri district the encumbrance certificate comes from the Registration Department of Tamil Nadu, through its TNREGINET portal — not from Karnataka's Kaveri, which holds nothing about land in Tamil Nadu and returns an empty result rather than an error. How many years to search is a diligence decision to take with your advocate against the title chain you are actually buying, so we prescribe no number; search the parent survey number as well as the plot.

The more useful half is what an EC does not show. It is a certificate that one named office searched its own index for a stated property over a stated range of dates — so it will never show a will, an adoption deed or a power of attorney, which are kept in different books, nor anything that was never registered at all. Change the dates or the office and the answer changes, and both answers can be correct.

Three documents and one walk. Get the survey sketch from the survey and settlement records for the survey number — in Tamil Nadu that is the FMB, the field measurement book drawing of the parcel's shape and boundaries. Get the approved layout plan showing the numbered plot you are buying. Then stand on the plot and check the physical demarcation against both, and check that the patta is for the subdivision you are buying, where the parent land has been subdivided. A boundary that exists only on a brochure plan is not a boundary.

By itself, nothing — it is marketing shorthand, and it appears on our own project page. What settles it is four documents you can ask for and read: the encumbrance certificate for the specific survey numbers, over a period that covers the title chain; the parent documents and the chain of title behind them; the revenue record for the holding, which in Tamil Nadu is the patta; and the approved layout, which is what makes a plot buildable rather than merely owned. Ask for the four rather than for the phrase. Where one of them does not exist yet, we say so instead of sending something adjacent to it.