Bangalore Property Dictionary: Every Term, Process, Measurement, Khata and Registration Rule Explained

Why Every Bangalore Buyer Needs This Dictionary

Every week, buyers walk into deals across Bangalore carrying the same handicap: the vocabulary. A seller quotes guntas, the deed reads square meters, the broker says super built-up, the bank asks for the mother deed, and the corporation wants an e-Khata before anyone signs anything. Get one term wrong and the cost is real money — a mispriced flat, a plot inside an acquisition alignment, a B-Khata site that no bank will fund.

This dictionary covers every term, process, measurement, Khata rule, and registration step that matters for a Karnataka property transaction in 2026 — the year the rules genuinely changed. The civic body that governed Bangalore for two decades no longer exists. The registration fee doubled for the first time since 2003. A one-time Khata conversion window is closing in weeks. If your knowledge is from 2024, parts of it are now wrong. Our Bangalore real estate guide covers the market itself; this page covers the language and the law underneath every deal. Bookmark it, and check what to verify before buying in a new market before your next site visit.

The 2026 Ground Reality: GBA and the Five Corporations

On 2 September 2025, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike — BBMP, the single municipal body governing Bangalore since 2007 — was formally dissolved. Under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, the state created the Greater Bengaluru Authority as the apex planning body and split civic administration across five new city corporations: Bengaluru North, South, East, West, and Central.

What does this mean at transaction level? The GBA itself does not process your Khata or collect your tax. It sits above the corporations, handling the master plan, Metro coordination, and oversight of the BDA, BWSSB, and BESCOM. The corporation whose jurisdiction your property falls under is what matters. The tax mathematics carried over untouched — the Unit Area Value method, zones A through F, the early payment rebate, and the same payment portal. What changed is which office holds your records, and through 2026 some of those handoffs are still settling. Our full breakdown of what the BBMP to GBA transition means for buyers covers the verification habits this demands.

One more 2026 reality every buyer must respect: the GBA actively pursues property tax defaulters through public auction and publishes a public defaulters list. A property with unresolved dues is not one you want to inherit — pull the last three to five years of tax receipts on every resale deal, no exceptions.

Karnataka Land Records: The Terms That Portals Never Explain

Apartment buyers can skim this section. Plot buyers cannot — this is where Bangalore's most expensive mistakes happen, because these records exist only in Karnataka's revenue system and no national portal explains them.

RTC / Pahani. Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops — the core revenue record for agricultural land in Karnataka, showing the owner, extent, crop, and land classification. Every plotted development on former farmland has an RTC history, and the chain must show the layout developer actually owned what was plotted. Records are checked through Bhoomi, the Karnataka land records portal.

DC Conversion. The Deputy Commissioner's order converting agricultural land to non-agricultural use under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act. Building a house on unconverted agricultural land is illegal, full stop. The words DC converted in a brochure mean nothing; the conversion order in your hand means everything. This is the first legality question for any plot, and our guide to checking land records online in Karnataka shows the exact verification steps.

Akarband and Tippani. The Survey Department's measurement record and sketch for a survey number. Together they let you verify that the plot being shown to you physically matches what the records say — shape, extent, and boundaries. A physical survey that disagrees with the Akarband is a dispute waiting for a buyer to inherit it.

Podi (Phodi). The sub-division of a survey number into separate numbers when land is split among owners. An un-podied joint survey number sold in pieces is one of the classic sources of Bangalore boundary litigation — three buyers, one survey number, no legal boundaries between them.

11E Sketch. A sketch issued by the Survey Department when a portion of a larger survey number is sold — mandatory for registering such a sale. If you are buying part of a survey number and nobody has mentioned an 11E sketch, stop and ask why.

Form 9 and Form 10. Khata documents issued by Gram Panchayats for properties within panchayat limits — Form 9 is the property record for non-agricultural properties, Form 10 the tax demand extract. Many peripheral Bangalore layouts run entirely on Form 9 and 10, and the rules differ from corporation Khata. Our detailed comparison of Form 9 versus Form 11 documents is one of the most-read guides on this site for a reason.

Grama Thana. Land recorded as village settlement area, exempt from conversion requirements. Genuine Grama Thana sites are rare; the label is widely misused by layout promoters precisely because it sounds like a legal shortcut. Verify against survey records, never against a brochure.

Guidance Value. The government-notified minimum value of a property for stamp duty purposes — Karnataka's version of what other states call circle rate. Stamp duty is payable on the higher of the guidance value or the actual sale price, and the current value for any street or survey number is checked on the Kaveri portal. Our complete guidance value guide for Bangalore is the most-visited page on this site, and pairs with the stamp duty calculator when you are budgeting a purchase.