Why Nandivahan

Most of what a committee needs already exists — with the secretary, in an old file, or with the office that issued it. Gathering it early is worth doing for its own sake: it tells a society what it actually owns before anyone else tells them.

The property card records who owns the land and what is registered against it. The CTS plan shows the plot's boundaries and the city survey number by which it is identified in every document that follows. The conveyance deed is the instrument by which the land passed to the society — if no one can find it, that is the first thing to look into. The society registration certificate establishes the society as a body that can enter into agreements at all.

Two others carry more weight than they appear to. The member list, with each flat's carpet area, is the basis of every calculation anyone will later make about the building. And the existing building's approved plans and occupation certificate record what was sanctioned when it went up, which is not always what stands there today.

How much can be built on a plot is not a matter of negotiation. It is set by regulation, and the same rules apply to anyone building there.

Four things drive it. The plot's area, as measured and recorded rather than as remembered. The width of the road it fronts, which matters more than most committees expect — a wider road generally permits more. The zone the plot falls in, which governs what may be built there at all: residential, commercial, or something mixed. And the regulation in force for that area, which sets out how these combine.

The practical consequence is that no one can tell a society what its plot will yield without first checking those four things. A figure offered before that has been done is a guess, however confidently it is given.

Three words get used as though they were interchangeable, and they are not. The difference between them is where a great deal of confusion in redevelopment begins.

Carpet area is the usable floor area inside a flat — what a carpet would cover if laid wall to wall. It is the figure a member should care about, because it is the space actually lived in. Built-up area adds the thickness of the walls and certain other elements. Saleable area, sometimes called super built-up, adds a share of the common areas as well — lobbies, staircases, lifts — and it is the largest of the three.

Because saleable is the largest, it is the most flattering to quote. Two offers can only be compared if they are stated in the same term, and of the three, carpet area is the one with the tightest definition behind it.

A society entering redevelopment is dealing with people who do this professionally, while for the committee it is usually the first and only time. Appointing its own advisors is how a society closes that gap.

A project management consultant works for the society. They read the technical side of a proposal, check what is offered against what the plot can support, watch the quality of what is built, and translate between the committee and the people doing the work. A solicitor handles the documents — the development agreement above all — and makes sure a member understands what they are being asked to sign before they sign it.

The important word in both cases is "own". A developer will have its own consultants and its own lawyers, and they are doing their job properly when they act in the developer's interest. That is precisely why a society needs people whose duty runs the other way.

Permissions come in a sequence, and each one has a specific meaning. Knowing which has been granted tells a committee more about where a project stands than anything visible from the street.

The IOD — intimation of disapproval, despite the name — is the list of conditions that must be satisfied before building can begin. It reads as a refusal and functions as a starting point. The commencement certificate is the permission to actually begin, granted once those conditions are met. Approval at plinth level comes next, where the authority checks that the foundation as built matches what was sanctioned, and further commencement is what allows the building to rise above it.

The occupation certificate comes at the end, and it is the one that matters most to a member: it is what makes the building lawful to occupy. Possession and the occupation certificate are separate things, and a committee should know the position on both.

Owning a flat and owning a share of the land underneath it are two different things. Conveyance is the transfer of the land and the building from the original developer or landowner to the society, and until it happens the society does not hold title to the ground its building stands on.

A great many societies discover this only when they begin thinking about redevelopment, because that is the point at which title suddenly matters. Deemed conveyance exists for exactly this situation: where the original owner has not executed the conveyance, a society can apply to have the transfer recorded without them.

For a committee the practical point is simple. Establish where the society stands on conveyance before going further, because it affects what the society is able to agree to.

The headline carpet figure is the number every offer leads with, and it is the easiest thing to compare. It is also, on its own, close to meaningless — a larger figure in a vaguer document is not a better offer.

Read for specificity first. Is the accommodation described precisely enough that a member could recognise their own future flat in it: the area, yes, but also where it sits, what it opens onto, what comes with it? Are the arrangements around the move set out, or merely mentioned? Corpus, transit accommodation, parking and the treatment of shops or other non-residential space all need to be visible in the document rather than agreed in conversation.

Then read for what is absent. Silence in an offer is not neutral — anything not written down is something to be settled later, and later is a worse time to settle it. This is where a society's own solicitor and consultant earn their appointment: they are reading for the same things, with more practice at it.