We provide a one stop real estate solutions for buyers, sellers, investors and cooperates by offering an umbrella of services. Our services include
- Property Listing - If you are a seller, we list your property and share it across our interested clients across the globe.
- Property Consultation and Shortlisting - If you are a buyer, we offer consultation services to find your dream home. we gather your requirements (and the budget) in detail and over multiple sittings, will draw your attention to interesting projects (ongoing/proposed/completed) that might be the best fit for your needs.
- Property Document Verification - We will do document verification for the property you have shortlisted to ensure that all the documents (for the given property) are complete, authentic and procured through the right process and wont have cause any future hussles.
- Site Visits, Negotiations, Preparation of Sale Agreements /Registration and closing the Deal - As a buyer, once you finalize a property, we will assist in arranging site visits, price negotiations and closing the deal. We also ensure that sale agreement content (Terms and conditions and finer details) is fool proof and complete making it safer bet /favourable for the buyer.
- Documentation works related to Registration of the property and post registration documentation services.
- Real Estate Investment Service - If you are an Investor, find out exclusive opportunities where your Real Estate investments earn you a steady income.
- Commercial Space Renting/Leasing Service
- Plot Purchase and Custom House Construction on Contract
Current Problem in the Industry
Unfortunately, the real estate domain is notorious for its lack of transparency/honesty, complexity of the processes and the presence of umpteen number of pitfalls luring innocent buyers. A Common issue is the dearth of dependable information available in the public domain that explains about the right process to be followed for each real estate transactions. There is no single “ Master document checklist” which can provide a complete/exhaustive list of relevant set of documents applicable for a given property deal. This makes it difficult for a first time buyer to understand what all documents to look for, what details to look for in each document and how to read/understand the content of each document. On top of that, the absence of an official single window facility to verify the completeness and authenticity of given property documents, makes it very difficult for first time buyers to make a confident purchase. Most of the time people are taking a blind “leap of faith”, based on whatever documents shown to them, rather than taking a “well informed choice” when it comes to finding a “law abiding property” .
How we are solving it
We are trying to solve this issue by devising a unique and unmatched exhaustive process which we follow for every transaction through us. This process ensures that all the documents (for the given property) are complete, authentic and procured through the right process. This ensures that the property is indeed a “law abiding” one and the purchase is risk free without any future hassles. The process we follow takes the customer experience to an entirely new levels of transparency and simplicity. As a part of our document verification process, we will be procuring various additional official documents related to the property through various official channels. At the end of the process, these legally valid official documents, will be handed over to our clients as extra supporting documents for their property, helping them to quash any future hassles on their path if any. By systematic knowledge sharing sessions and discussions with our clients, we ensure that our clients follow through and understand each and every minute details about the process. This makes the entire process simple and easy to follow and also empowers our clients to cross check the entire process themselves. We also put efforts in creating public awareness and educative videos/contents about the real estate space in Kerala and spread awareness against common pitfalls in the Real Estate Domain. We believe that these efforts will help in empowering common people to make well informed decisions and safeguard themselves from the common pitfalls in this domain. We encourage you to read more about our entire process in detail below in Question 5 . This will help you to understand what set us apart from other similar service providers in this domain.
The standard time frame we need for this process is 30 days. But please note that in some cases we might need more time as reply from some government departments get delayed beyond the standard time norms.
The actual time needed for completing document verification service will depend on the below factors
- Peculiarity of the location of the property - Different locations demand different process and more number of documents from various other departments other than the standard set of documents and authorities involved . Eg: A property based on their location might need document clearance from Coastal Regulatory Zone Management Authority , Railway, Mining department etc.
- Peculiarity of the Building - Different buildings (even though at the same location) might demand different types of clearances. Eg. If the location is under a CCZ mapped area and height of the proposed building is above the minimum clearance height then it might need an NoC from Airport authority etc.
- Number of Documents already provided by the builder/ Seller - In some cases the builder/Seller might not be having a lot of relevant important documents in his possession and it might need to be procured from corresponding departments through official channel via separate applications to the corresponding departments. This might add more time to the entire process.
- Response time from the official authorities - In some cases the government authorities might cause unexpected delay by either providing an incomplete response or delayed response for a query we have raised, demanding us to go for a new application or an appeal to higher authority depending on a case by case basis. Such situations might add more time to the entire process.
If the document verification is not completed within 30 days, we will keep you informed and will share a detailed status/progress report indicating about all the steps we have taken and what all details are pending from what all departments. We will keep you in the loop till our document verification is completed.
At the end of the document verification process, we will provide a final recommendation on whether you can go ahead with the buying this or not. In some cases the recommendation might not be a simple yes or no, instead an open decision explaining the risks involved in different scenarios if you are going ahead with the buy. We will also prepare a detailed report commenting on the status of each of the relevant documents (presence or absence of it , authenticity of documents, risk assessment etc.).
This process we follow ensures that, all the documents (for the given property) are complete, authentic and procured through the right process. This ensures that the property is indeed a “law abiding” one and the purchase is risk free without any future hassles. As a part of our document verification process, we will be procuring various additional official documents related to the property through various official channels. Every single steps of the verification process will be supported by an official document obtained through official channels. At the end of the process, these legally valid official documents, will be handed over to our clients, along with our final reports, as extra supporting documents for their property, helping them to quash any future hassles on their path if any.
By systematic knowledge sharing sessions and discussions with our clients, we ensure that our clients follow through and understand each and every minute details about the process. Using all the above supporting documents we will be explaining on how we have arrived at a conclusion/recommendation regarding the purchase of the property. Please read the answer to Question5 to know more on the check lists we follow for this process. This will help you in understanding more about the trustworthiness of the report we will be providing you.
We do property document verification service as a value added service (at no extra cost ) for a client who is buying a property through our realtor services. But in many cases we used to have clients who have already purchased or in the process of purchasing a property via an external source (other than us), approaching us exclusively for our document verification service. They opt for our service to verify the completeness , authenticity of the property documents and also to detect any deviations/violations involved in the process of procuring the given property documents ( by whoever procured the corresponding documents on behalf of the buyer ) which might create some hassles in the future.
It is also not surprising to us that, some clients are skeptical about our document verification fees, when they compare it to a standard lawyer fee for document scrutiny. The simple answer to this is that our service is entirely unique and have a scope much beyond what a lawyer/legal expert can offer. Now for the long answer, allow us to shed some light in to the finer details of our service. It needs some time to read till the end but trust us, it will be beneficial to you even if you are not taking our service.
It is very important to understand the difference between our Document verification service and that of a lawyer ( for document verification). Most of the times, the document verification involves only three parties. Buyer, builder and the lawyer/legal team. Buyer will be approaching a lawyer for document verification and will be providing the documents given by the builder. The lawyer will be assessing the legality of the documents given to him. But sadly the devil is in the details and a simple legal scrutiny might miss it. Most of the times there are many aspects we need to consider other than just the legal aspect of the transaction. Here are few common pitfalls that might be missed if there is no eye for details.
- Authenticity of documents : - Most of the times, the documents given by builder will be passed on to the lawyer/legal team as is. It is very important to check the authenticity of each of the document from its original sources before we start the legal scrutiny. We have seen cases where buyer would have went ahead with the purchase on getting a green signal from their lawyer based on the documents given by builders and later it was found out that one or many documents provided by the builder is not genuine or have been tampered with. So even though the content of the documents (passed on to the legal team) might look perfect, the document itself might not be authentic. In our service we do not pass any document to the legal team as is. We collect all the documents from the builder and use the details ( survey number , building permit number , etc) to get a true copy of the original document from the concerned authorities through official channels. This involves a lot of unforeseen efforts and time. It might include several physical visits to the concerned offices, RTI applications or regular follow-ups through other channels.
- Completeness of the documents - There are many cases where identifying the right set of documents for the given building itself is flawed. Take the example of Maradu flats, as explained in our Maradu video, many lawyers and even Legal team of banks like SBI underestimated the necessity of the KCZMA NoC due to various other factors ( approved building plan, court order from high court favourable to builders etc ) . This lead to catastrophic disaster and many lost their most important assets in Maradu. So it is very important to double check whether all the relevant NoC’s and other documents are also present along with the main documents. Many times people miss one more important necessary documents or NoC from one of the departments /authorities applicable for that building. Identifying all NoC’s applicable to one building itself needs a lot of research and experience. For example some bigger flat apartments with underground parking in some sensitive areas might need NoC from the department of Mining and Geology. Others might need a NoC from a land tribunal / other district heads on the top of all the other relevant NoC’s. On top of that NoC’s from several authorities is only one among such documents. There are several other documents that might be applicable to a building like town planner office approval etc . So identifying an exhaustive list of relevant documents for a given property deal is not a straightforward process. It might need a detailed study about the property, the peculiarity of the property area, knowledge of recent changes in law and the process and past experiences in dealing with similar properties. Then it might also need official correspondences with all the concerned departments/authorities/tribunals for an official confirmation from each of them regarding the necessity of relevant documents from each department. This has to be cross verified with the documents provided by the builder for finding any missing documents. On top of that, as mentioned earlier, one needs to verify the authenticity of any NoC’s provided by the builder through official channels from the respective authority.
- Procedural correctness of document procurement process : - Sometimes, whatever documents produced by the builder will be authentic and will be verifiable on matching with a true copy obtained from official channel. Unfortunately the process followed by the concerned authorities in procuring these documents might be flawed or rigged. In some cases (like Maradu flat issue) respective local authorities might have issued the documents without following the due procedure thus bypassing the standard procedure for various vested personal interests ( like personal gain , political pressure so on and so forth ). Such documents (despite being authentic in itself) might get invalidated in case of a dispute and won't stand in a court of law, creating serious issues for the buyer in the future. For example the building permit of Maradu flats was an authentic document but the authorities themselves have violated a lot of rules in issuing them including ignoring the missing NoC from KCZMA and the CRZ violations in the building plan. Identifying such unethical/illegal practises by local authorities in issuing the property documents needs in depth knowledge/experience about the actual process that should have been followed. It involves a lot of man hours tracing through each step, following the paper trail and cross checking the legal validity of each step done by local authority in issuing these documents. At the end of the day, “legal ignorance of the buyer” about the process might not be accepted as an excuse in a court of law .
- Difference between the reality and what is on the paper :- In some cases, the documents of the building (including the approved building plan) might look perfectly fine on the paper. This might lead the lawyer to certify that everything looks good and giving a green signal to the client to go ahead with the purchase. But if the builder has violated the approved building plan while constructing the building (on the ground) then it might lead to denial of final NoC (certificate of approval ) from various departments (eg. fire force) and even might lead to cancelation of the building permit itself in future. But identifying such a building plan violation during the construction phase is NOT the responsibility of a lawyer. We need the skillsets of an architect/engineer to double check whether the ongoing construction is in fact in sync with the approved building plans as submitted to the corresponding authorities. We have discussed about such incidents in our Maradu video (on our YouTube channel). So in our service, in addition to legal experts we use architects/engineers to have site visits and compare the construction with the approved building plan to ensure that there are no major visible violations of the approved building plan. ( eg. Approved building plan might have distance to the waterbody as 200m where on the site the actual construction might be less than 100m from the waterbody).
- Let the buyer beware - : When it comes to buying flats, another important aspect that most people miss is to double check the actual carpet area of the flat against the advertised one , before possession/buying. Most of the time buyers are taking a “leap of faith” when it comes to carpet area (living space) trusting builders on providing the so called “advertised area/numbers”. But buyers might end up in a much smaller living areas than what they might have imagined from the advertised area. It is very important to understand the technical difference between super built-up area, built-up area and the carpet area/living area of the flat. This expectation mismatch in the area might happen due to intentional obscure wordings used by the builder when describing the floor area of the flat, thereby creating a false expectation in buyer by causing misunderstanding between super built up area and actual carpet area of the flat. It can also happen due to an intentional false promise from a builder/sales person for achieving a sales target. Not surprisingly, the maximum number of cases registered in the consumer courts, are against developers on the issue of cheating, regarding the discrepancy in the size of the flat. In our service we will measure the actual carpet area (living space) of the flat to ensure that buyer is making a well informed choice and is making the purchase with the correct expectations. This also ensures that buyer is getting what he pays for.
Whatever we have mentioned above are few among many checklists involved in our document verification service. As described in detail above, this document verification service might extend to property verification itself in many cases. As explained above, this involves many man hours of time/efforts/money , a lot of other roles and skill sets / services involved within the documentation service itself ( legal experts, architects/engineers and other subject matter experts ). We believe whatever we offer is unique in the industry and hence most of the time difficult for the clients to understand when comparing the costs with respect to a mere legal scrutiny.
As a part of our document verification process, we will be procuring various additional official documents related to the property through various official channels. At the end of the process, these legally valid official documents, will be handed over to our clients as extra supporting documents for their property, helping them to quash any future hussles on their path if any. By systematic knowledge sharing sessions and discussions with our clients, we ensure that our clients follow through and understand each and every minute details about the process.
We focus on buying and selling properties (across Kerala ) for our clients and the document verification is one of the value added service we offer to our clients who are buying/selling through us.
We do this entire process whenever one of our clients buy a property through us ( where the property itself is first introduced to the client by our realtor service ) . The easier route to take would have been to charge the industry norm broker fee and leave the document works to clients legal team. Instead, we provide a one stop solution right from the stage of property searching, property shortlisting, site visits, document verifications, negotiations, closing the deal, registration of the property and all related documentations post property registration. The document verification is a very important step in the whole process to ensure transparency, authenticity and completeness of the transaction through us. We also would like to point out that document verification stage is one of our main bottlenecks in our entire end to end process of buying a property through us demanding most of our time and efforts. Unfortunately this forces us to put a limit on the number of clients we will be able to accept and offer our services in a given window of time. Since we do the document verification mandatorily for all transactions for our clients who are buying a property through our realtor services, we have a limitation on the number of service requests that we are able to accept for doing only documentation services during a given time window depending on the availability of our bandwidth .
In a nutshell, our document verification service itself is a unique, long, exhaustive process and it does cost more than a simple legal scrutiny of the documents. As discussed above, our documentation have a scope much beyond what a lawyer/legal expert can offer. The transparency we offer for the entire process is unmatched in the industry. On top of everything else, as you might have already noticed, we ensure that our clients are well informed about the details of each and every minute steps and documents involved in this process. We decipher this entire complicated process in to simple smaller steps so that once our clients go through the entire process they feel empowered and become knowledgeable (if there is a knowledge gap ) about the entire process and all the documents involved. They will be aware of the common pitfalls, will be aware of what documents to look for , what details to look for in every single document and will be confident enough to read and understand all the documents involved. At the end of this process, our clients will be able to do a first round of document scrutiny themselves the next time they come across a property transaction. In short we ensure that we make “Real Estate Simplified” to our clients and ensure that they are taking a well informed choice rather than a “leap of faith” when doing a property transaction.
Feel free to contact us over mail or phone for any further clarifications or questions.
Email: KeralaRealEstateGuide@gmail.com
Phone: +91 8113855444