Ten documents to check before buying a flat

Most flat purchases in India start with a brochure and a price. The papers arrive later, often in a hurry, often as photos on a phone. By then a token has been paid and the family has already decided. The cheaper moment to read is before that payment. You do not need a perfect legal education to know which documents to ask for. You do need to know what each one is supposed to prove, and what it cannot.

Names change by city, and not every building has every paper. If a seller says one “does not apply”, ask which fact replaces it.

The ten papers

• The sale deed into the present seller, not only an agreement to sell. An agreement records a promise. A registered sale deed is the conveyance. If the seller bought from a builder and never registered a sale, you are not looking at a finished title.
• The parent deeds, often called mother deeds, going back as far as the file reasonably allows. One deed tells you the last step. The chain tells you whether the last step had something to stand on.
• An encumbrance certificate for a stated period, read for the dates and the property description, not only for the word “nil”. A short period that begins after the seller’s purchase is a weak comfort.
• The local ownership extract: mutation, khata, or the revenue or municipal account that city maintains. Check the name. A khata still standing in the developer’s name is unfinished business, even when the flat is occupied.
• Property-tax receipts that run up to a recent period, plus any demand that is unpaid. Arrears have a habit of surfacing when you ask for a transfer.
• The sanctioned building plan, including revisions. Match the floor and the wing to the plan. A flat on a floor the plan does not show is a different conversation from a flat the plan allows.
• The building permit or commencement permission, and the occupancy or completion certificate. These are not decorations for the loan file. They are how the city recorded that this building could be built and then lived in.
• For a project that falls under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, the RERA registration as it appears on that state’s portal. A number on a brochure is a claim. The portal entry is the check. Older buildings may never have needed registration. That absence should be explained, not waved through.
• The builder-buyer agreement, allotment letter, and payment receipts where the first sale was from a developer. On a resale, these papers show what the seller actually bought, including car parking and the area definition.
• A society or association no-dues letter, and the share certificate or membership paper if that city uses one. The society is often the first place a hidden dispute or a maintenance arrears problem appears.

What to do with the stack

Lay the schedule of the flat — number, floor, area, car park — next to each document and see whether the description holds still. Small changes are sometimes clerical. They are also how a different unit gets slipped into a file. Then look at names. The person in the latest deed, the person in the khata, and the person who will sign your sale should be the same person, or the difference should be explained by a death, a transmission, or a registered transfer.

Do not treat this list as a guarantee. A complete-looking file can still hide a forged page, an heir who did not sign, or a suit that was never mentioned. The list is how you avoid buying blind. A proper review then tests the papers against the registers. If a seller resists sharing them before a token, that resistance is information. Serious sellers expect the file to be read.