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

Published: 13 July 2026 | Updated: 1 August 2026 | By L K Monu Borkala, CEO & Founder, OneCity Property — 15 years of property consultancy experience and over 20 years in marketing and management at OneCity Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

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 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 guidecovers the market itself; this page covers the language and the law underneath every deal. Read it start to finish once, then keep it bookmarked, and run through what to verify before buying in a new marketbefore 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 that governed Bangalore since 2007, was formally dissolved. Under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, the state created the Greater Bengaluru Authorityas 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 buyerscovers 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 on its own website. 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.

Ownership and Title: The Terms That Decide Who Actually Owns What

Sale Deed.The primary legal document that transfers ownership from seller to buyer, executed on stamp paper and compulsorily registered at the jurisdictional Sub-Registrar office. The registered sale deed, not the Khata, not the tax receipt, is the proof of ownership. Everything else in a property file exists to support this one document.

Agreement to Sell (ATS).The contract that precedes the sale deed, recording the agreed price, the payment schedule, and the timeline, typically 60 to 90 days. It does not transfer ownership by itself. In Karnataka an ATS should also be stamped; a surprising number of disputes trace back to casual, under-stamped agreements signed in a sales office on a Sunday afternoon.

Title.The legal right of ownership. The phrase that matters is clear and marketable title: an unbroken chain of ownership documents, free of disputes, encumbrances and third-party claims. Every rupee spent on due diligence exists to establish this one thing.

Mother Deed.The earliest available document in the chain of title, for older Bangalore properties this may be a government grant, a partition deed, or a sale deed from decades back. Banks routinely demand the mother deed before sanctioning a loan, and its absence slows everything down or stops it entirely.

Encumbrance Certificate (EC).A certificate from the Sub-Registrar listing every registered transaction on a property, sales, mortgages, gifts, court attachments, for a chosen period, pulled online through Kaveri Online Services. A nil EC for a period means no registered encumbrance in that window. Pull a minimum of 15 years; banks may ask for 30. An EC gap of even a few years is a question that must be answered before anyone signs anything.

Mutation.Updating the revenue or municipal record to reflect the new owner after a sale, inheritance, or gift. Inside city limits this is the Khata transfer. For agricultural land it is entered in the Mutation Register at the taluk office. A completed registration with a pending mutation is unfinished business, the tax bills still arrive in the old owner's name, and the next buyer's advocate will ask why.

General Power of Attorney (GPA).A document authorising another person to act on the owner's behalf. Here is the sentence that saves buyers lakhs: a GPA sale is not a sale. The Supreme Court held in 2011 that GPA transactions do not convey title. Any property offered on a GPA basis is a serious red flag, the seller is offering you paperwork, not ownership. Our Karnataka property law guidecovers the case law and its consequences in depth.

Occupancy Certificate (OC).Issued by the corporation once construction is completed per the sanctioned plan, certifying the building is fit for occupation. Mandatory for apartments. No OC means a compliance gap that follows the property through every loan application, Khata process, and resale for the rest of its life. And the phrase applied for is not the same as issued, ask to see the certificate.

Completion Certificate (CC).Certifies that construction matched the approved plan. Buyers confuse the two constantly: the CC is about the structure matching the plan; the OC is about fitness for occupation. A tower can hold a CC and still lack an OC, and that gap is the buyer's problem the moment the deed is signed.

Betterment Charges.A one-time corporation levy for regularising a property that benefited from public infrastructure without contributing to it. This levy sits at the centre of the B-Khata to A-Khata conversion covered later in this dictionary, and it is the number that decides whether regularisation makes financial sense.

Karnataka Land Records: The Terms 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 properly.

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 printed in a brochure mean nothing; the conversion order in your hand means everything. This is the first legality question for any plot.

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 measurement that disagrees with the Akarband is a dispute waiting for a buyer to inherit it. Karnataka's Survey, Settlement and Land Records departmentis the issuing authority.

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, and 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 these forms, and the rules differ from corporation Khata. Our Form 9 versus Form 10 guideexplains the distinction that decides whether a panchayat-limits site is financeable.

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 Bangalorepairs with the stamp duty calculatorwhen you are budgeting a purchase.

The Khata System: A-Khata, B-Khata, and e-Khata

Khata is the single most misunderstood word in Bangalore real estate. It is the municipal account of a property for tax purposes, not a title document, and it does not confer ownership. But nothing moves without it: no tax payment, no water connection, no plan sanction, no clean transaction. And in 2026, e-Khata is mandatory for all property registrations within city corporation limits. No valid e-Khata, no registration.

A-Khatais issued to properties that comply with municipal regulations, approved building plan, occupancy certificate where applicable, converted land, zoning compliance. It unlocks everything: bank loans, plan sanctions for additions, trade licences, and a clean resale at full value.

B-Khatais issued to properties that pay tax but carry one or more compliance gaps, revenue sites, missing plan approvals, deviations, no OC. The B register began as a parallel tax record for unauthorised structures. The practical consequences are severe: most public-sector banks refuse home loans against B-Khata, private lenders charge more, and resale happens at a discount. Bengaluru holds roughly 17.5 lakh A-Khata and 7.5 lakh B-Khata properties, with another 7 to 8 lakh holding no Khata at all.

e-Khatais the digitised, portal-verified Khata on the e-Aasthi portal. Since 25 April 2026 it can be downloaded using the SAS Property Tax ID printed on any earlier tax receipt. It carries a tamper-proof QR code, updates within about 48 hours of a tax payment, and banks accept it directly for loan processing. Applications can also route through Seva Sindhu. The single most common delay is a name mismatch between Aadhaar, the sale deed, and the tax record, check all three spellings before you begin. Our step-by-step e-Khata application guidewalks through the full flow.

The Bhu Guarantee Window: B-Khata to A-Khata at 2 Percent, Closing 23 August 2026

Under the state's Bhu Guarantee drive, Nanna e-Khata, Nanna Hakku, the B-Khata to A-Khata conversion fee stands slashed from 5 percent of guidance value to 2 percent for a 100-day window that opened in mid-May 2026 and closes on 23 August 2026. From 24 August, the rate reverts to 5 percent.

The eligibility mechanics: individual sites (the online citizen flow handles properties up to 2,000 square meters; larger ones route through BPAS), a valid e-Khata, property tax fully paid, Aadhaar eKYC for every owner, the Khata already in the applicant's name, and an adjoining public road or a private one with consent. e-Khata Open House camps run every Saturday at 52 venues across the five corporations for hands-on help. After inspection and approval, a Single Plot Approval Certificate issues and the A-Khata generates automatically.

If you or anyone in your family holds a B-Khata site, the arithmetic is not subtle: on a sixty lakh guidance value, acting inside the window costs Rs 1.2 lakh; missing it costs Rs 3 lakh. This is the rare government scheme where the deadline is real and the saving is measured in lakhs.

Measurements and Conversions: Guntas, Acres, and the Deed That Reads in Meters

Bangalore transactions mix imperial, metric, and local units freely. The seller quotes guntas, the sale deed records square meters, the client thinks in square feet, and a visiting relative from Chennai asks how many grounds it is. Here is the conversion table that settles every one of those conversations.

The unit that trips up newcomers is the gunta, Karnataka's traditional farmland measure: one gunta is 1,089 square feet, and forty guntas make one acre of 43,560 square feet. When a seller in Devanahalli says two acres fifteen guntas, that is 95 guntas, which is 103,455 square feet, and being able to do that arithmetic on the spot changes how a negotiation treats you.

Sale deeds and government records use square meters as the legal standard, which is why a 30x40 site appears in the deed as 111.48 square meters. Keep the three-way conversion in your head: divide square feet by 10.764 for square meters, divide by 1,089 for guntas. Everything else is multiplication.

Apartment Terms: Carpet, Built-Up, Super Built-Up, and the Loading Game

Carpet Area.The net usable floor area inside the walls of the unit, literally the area you could lay a carpet on. RERA mandates that apartments be sold quoting carpet area, precisely because the older conventions invited abuse. It excludes external walls and common areas; balconies are counted separately.

Built-up Area.Carpet area plus the thickness of internal and external walls and the balcony, typically 10 to 15 percent above carpet.

Super Built-up Area.Built-up area plus a proportionate share of the common areas: lobby, staircases, corridors, clubhouse. This is the saleable area builders historically quoted, and the gap between super built-up and carpet is the loading, commonly 25 to 40 percent in Bangalore. Run the arithmetic on every project you compare: a flat quoted at Rs 6,500 per square foot on 1,450 square feet super built-up with 30 percent loading is really Rs 8,450 per square foot of carpet. Two projects with identical quoted rates can differ by lakhs once loading is accounted for. Browse our ranked list of Bangalore projectswith this lens and the shortlist changes.

UDS, Undivided Share.The fractional share of the underlying land registered in an apartment buyer's name. The building depreciates every year; the UDS is what holds long-term value and what decides your position in any future redevelopment. Verify that the UDS written in your deed is proportionate to your unit, a smaller-than-proportionate UDS is value silently transferred away from you.

FAR / FSI.Floor Area Ratio, or Floor Space Index, the ratio of total built floor area to plot area permitted by zoning. It determines how much can legally be built on a plot, and additional FAR is now also offered as compensation currency in government acquisitions.

TDR, Transferable Development Rights.Development rights granted, typically as compensation for land surrendered to the government, which can be sold or used to build extra area elsewhere. Relevant to anyone holding land in an acquisition corridor.

Project stages.Pre-launch (before RERA registration, marketing at this stage is not permitted and money paid has no escrow protection), new launch (RERA-registered, construction starting), under construction, and OC-ready or ready-to-move. Projects like Sobha One World in HoskoteBrigade Citrine at Budigere Crossand Purva Aerocity near the airport corridoreach sit at different points of this ladder, and the stage changes both the risk and the price logic.

CAM and Sinking Fund.Common Area Maintenance is the monthly charge for shared amenities, usually per square foot of super built-up area. The sinking fund is the separate corpus for future major repairs. On any resale in an older society, ask for the sinking fund status, a healthy corpus is invisible in the flat but very visible the year the lifts need replacement.

The Buying Journey: Ten Steps From Search to Keys

Two of these steps deserve expansion, because they are where money is lost.

The token rule.A token advance exists to show seriousness, not to finance the seller. It should be small, it should be against a written receipt naming the property and the agreed price, and it should carry written refund conditions. Larger payments belong after the encumbrance certificate, the e-Khata, and a legal opinion, never before. A seller who resists this order of operations is communicating something, and it is worth listening.

The post-registration step exists.Registration is not the finish line. Until the Khata transfers to your name and the tax record updates, the municipal system still shows the previous owner, and utilities for electricityand waterstill bill the old name. Buyers who skip this step discover it years later, at their own resale, when the next buyer's advocate asks why the records disagree. NRI buyers face additional layers of this, our NRI property buying guideand country-specific guides for buyers in the USAand UAEcover the remittance and POA mechanics.

Due Diligence: The File That Protects You

The due diligence file is not bureaucracy, it is the entire difference between buying a property and buying a problem. The base file applies to everything: the complete chain of title deeds up to the mother deed, an encumbrance certificate covering at least fifteen years, an e-Khata that matches the seller's name and PID exactly, three to five years of tax receipts with zero dues, and identity verification of everyone with a claim, including every legal heir where the property was inherited. Final legal opinion always comes from an advocate; the file's job is to give that advocate everything and to surface red flags early enough that walking away is cheap.

For plots, the stack from the land records section applies in full: conversion order, layout approval from the correct planning authority, release deed, 11E sketch where a portion of a survey number is sold, and an Akarband match against physical measurement. For apartments: the RERA entry with its last two quarterly filings read carefully, the sanctioned plan, both the CC and the OC, the individual unit Khata, the UDS check, and on resale an association no-objection with a dues-clear letter.

Red Flags That Should Stop a Deal Cold

The acquisition-alignment flag deserves its own paragraph, because it is live right now. The Peripheral Ring Road, rebranded the Bengaluru Business Corridor, has roughly 2,560 acres notified across dozens of villages on the city's periphery, including stretches around Varthur, Hennur, Yelahanka, and the Sarjapur corridor. Owners inside the notified alignment are barred from selling, and a buyer who registers a deal inside it anyway inherits litigation, not land. Before any peripheral plot purchase, check the survey number against the alignment, our guide to what to verify around the STRR and PRR corridorswalks through it, and the Bangalore Development Authorityholds the notified lists. While you are checking location risk, run the flood question too, here is exactly how to check whether a Bangalore property floodsand compare localities with cold data in our Bangalore locality comparison.

Registration and Stamp Duty: The 2026 Numbers

The registration chapter of Karnataka property law changed materially in late 2025, and most of the internet has not caught up. Here is the current structure, verified against the notifications rather than repeated from older articles.

Three facts to hold onto. First, the slabs: 2 percent up to Rs 20 lakh, 3 percent between Rs 21 and 45 lakh, 5 percent above Rs 45 lakh, always computed on the higher of the guidance value or the actual price, which is why undervaluing a deed does not work and is an offence besides. Second, the cess and surcharge: 10 percent cess plus 2 percent surcharge on the duty in urban areas, taking the effective top-slab rate to about 5.6 percent. Third, the change most articles still miss: the registration fee doubled from 2 percent to 2 percent effective 31 August 2025, the first revision since 2003, applying uniformly to residential, commercial, and plotted transactions. The rates and the e-stamping flow live on Kaveri 2.0run by the Department of Stamps and Registrationand Karnataka's digital e-stamp rules have been live since January 2026, so the entire duty payment happens online. Estimate your own numbers with our Karnataka stamp duty calculatorbefore you negotiate, not after.

Registration Day: What Actually Happens at the Sub-Registrar Office

With the file complete, the day itself is anticlimactic: slot booked on Kaveri, duty and fee paid online as an e-stamp, all parties present with originals and PAN cards, biometrics and witness signatures captured, and the registered deed returned the same day at most Bangalore offices with the registration number endorsed. The professional habit that separates careful buyers: pull a fresh encumbrance certificate two to four weeks later and confirm your own transaction now appears on it. What goes wrong on the day is almost always preventable, a guidance value dispute (check the exact street or survey number on Kaveri beforehand), a name spelling that differs across PAN, Aadhaar, and the deed (do the three-way check during drafting), or a missing e-Khata (which is now step zero, not an afterthought).

Finance Terms: TDS, LTV, and the Sanction Trap

TDS on property.When the total consideration is Rs 50 lakh or above, the buyer must deduct 1 percent from the payment, deposit it with the tax department via Form 26QB on the income tax portaland hand the seller Form 16B as proof. Most first-time buyers have never heard of this until an advocate mentions it a week before registration; plan it into the payment schedule instead.

LTV, loan to value.The share of a property's value a bank will fund, capped by RBInorms: up to 90 percent below Rs 30 lakh, 80 percent between Rs 30 and 75 lakh, 75 percent above that. The balance is your margin money, and B-Khata properties face outright refusals or worse terms from most public-sector lenders, which is exactly why the Khata sections above matter to your financing, not just your paperwork. Model your EMI honestly with the home loan EMI calculatorand if the property is an investment, sanity-check the return with the rental yield calculator.

Sanction versus disbursement.A sanction letter is the bank's in-principle approval of an amount against your income. Disbursement happens only after the bank's own legal and technical verification of the specific property. The trap: paying a seller a large advance on the strength of a sanction letter, before the bank has cleared the property itself. Sequence the payments so nothing big moves until the bank's verification is done.

e-Stamping and franking.e-Stamping is the electronic payment of stamp duty generating a digital certificate, standard in Karnataka and fully online since the digital e-stamp rules of January 2026. Franking, stamping through an authorised bank machine, is the older method the term still lingers from.

Property Tax Under the New Regime

The annual property tax follows the Unit Area Value method: built-up area multiplied by the zonal UAV rate, a usage factor, and age depreciation, plus 24 percent cess, with the city classified into zones A through F. Self-occupied homes attract a lower factor than tenanted ones. Use the official calculator on the tax portal for a real figure, hand computations of UAV tax mislead more than they help, because the published rates fold in assumptions that are easy to miss.

The calendar matters more than the formula. A 5 percent rebate applies to a single full-year payment made before the annual deadline, an every-year cycle that typically closes at the end of April and was extended to 31 May in 2026. Miss it and instalment payments forfeit the rebate; miss the payment entirely and the penalty runs 2 percent per month plus 15 percent simple interest, with two consecutive years of default able to reach a 100 percent penalty. Receipts should be kept for at least seven years, they are asked for at Khata transfer, loan processing, and resale, and continuity of payment matters far more than which authority's logo sits on the receipt through the corporation handover.

Property Types: What You Are Actually Buying

Apartment.A unit in a multi-storey building with an undivided share of the land. The defining checks: RERA registration, occupancy certificate, an individual unit Khata, and a proportionate UDS. Maintenance economics, CAM and the sinking fund, decide how the building ages.

Villa or row house.An independent house inside a gated project. It behaves like a house for the unit itself and like an apartment for everything shared, verify the plan sanction for your specific unit and the project's title over the common areas, and read the association bye-laws before assuming what you may build or modify.

Independent house.A standalone house on its own plot. The trap here is deviation: the built structure versus the sanctioned plan. A floor added without sanction, a setback swallowed by a room, each deviation is a discount at resale and a complication at loan time. Compare the plan against the walls, not against the seller's memory.

Approved plot.Vacant land in a layout approved by the correct planning authority, BDA, BMRDA, or BIAAPA depending on where it sits. The full verification stack from the land records section applies. Plotted developments such as Fortune City in Gauribidanurillustrate the category: the value is in the paper as much as the land.

Revenue site.A plot carved from agricultural land without conversion or layout approval. Usually B-Khata or no Khata, rarely financeable, and legally fragile. The price is tempting precisely because the risk is priced in. If you buy one anyway, do it with open eyes and a written legal opinion, not on a promise that regularisation is coming.

Farmland.Agricultural land under an RTC. Karnataka regulates who may buy it and land ceilings apply; residential construction is illegal without conversion. The RTC chain and the buyer eligibility rules come before any conversation about price.

Rental and Lease Terms: The Other Half of the Market

Rental agreement versus lease.In everyday Bangalore usage, a rental agreement is the 11-month contract most landlords sign, deliberately under 12 months to avoid compulsory registration. A lease of 12 months or longer must be registered and stamped accordingly. The 11-month convention is legal, but an unregistered agreement is weaker evidence in a dispute; for high deposits, registration is worth the fee.

Security deposit.Bangalore's legacy convention of ten months' rent as deposit is fading, three to six months is the realistic market now, and the number is negotiable. Whatever the figure, the refund conditions and deduction rules belong in writing. A deposit is the tenant's money held in trust, not an interest-free loan the landlord plans to argue about later.

Leave and licence.A permission to occupy that does not create tenancy rights, common in corporate housing. The distinction matters because tenancy law protections attach to leases, not licences.

TDS on rent.Tenants paying rent above the statutory monthly threshold must deduct tax at source and deposit it, a rule that surprises corporate tenants and NRI landlords alike. The mechanics live on the income tax portaland NRI landlords face a different, higher TDS regime on rent than resident landlords do.

Rental yield.Annual rent as a percentage of property value, Bangalore residential typically runs 3 to 4.5 percent in the IT corridors. Before buying to let, run the actual numbers with our rental yield calculatorrather than trusting a marketing brochure's projection, and read the rental and lease guidesfor the landlord-side paperwork.

NRI Terms: FEMA, Repatriation, and the Power of Attorney Done Right

FEMA.The Foreign Exchange Management Act governs what NRIs may buy: residential and commercial property yes, agricultural land, plantation property and farmhouses no. The rules and their current circulars sit with the Reserve Bank of Indiaand every NRI purchase should be structured with them in view from day one, not retrofitted at resale.

NRE, NRO, FCNR.The three account types through which NRI money legally moves. Purchase funds come through these accounts or as inward remittance, never cash. Which account funded the purchase later decides how easily sale proceeds repatriate, which is why the paper trail at buying time is a repatriation decision in disguise.

Repatriation.Taking sale proceeds back out of India, routed through an NRO account with banker and chartered accountant certificates, subject to annual limits. Buyers who kept clean records repatriate smoothly; buyers who did not spend months reconstructing them.

POA for NRIs.An NRI who cannot attend registration executes a specific, not general, power of attorney, attested at the Indian consulate abroad and adjudicated in Karnataka before use. A narrowly drafted POA naming the property and the acts permitted is normal practice and entirely different from the GPA-sale problem discussed earlier: here the POA supports a real registered sale by the real owner. Country-specific mechanics differ enough that we maintain separate guides, see the editions for buyers in the UKAustraliaSingaporeand Canadaalongside the master NRI buying guide.

TDS when buying from an NRI seller.The buyer's deduction is not 1 percent when the seller is an NRI, it rises steeply under the non-resident provisions, and getting it wrong makes the buyer liable. Confirm the seller's residential status in writing before the agreement, and take a CA's computation before registration.

Home Loan Terms Beyond the Interest Rate

EBLR and MCLR.The benchmarks banks price loans against. External Benchmark Lending Rate loans, most new home loans, track the RBI repo rate and reprice quickly in both directions. Older MCLR loans move slower. Knowing which regime your loan sits in explains why your EMI did or did not change after a policy announcement, and refinancing between regimes is sometimes worth lakhs.

Pre-EMI.On under-construction purchases with staged disbursement, the interest-only payments made before the full loan disburses. Pre-EMI is pure interest, it builds no equity, which is one honest reason ready-to-move property costs more than the same flat under construction.

Prepayment and foreclosure.Floating-rate home loans to individuals carry no prepayment penalty, per RBI direction. Part-prepayments early in the tenure attack the principal when interest is front-loaded, the single most effective thing a borrower can do to a 20-year loan.

CERSAI.The central registry where lenders record mortgages. When a bank funds your purchase, the charge appears here; when a loan closes, confirm the charge is released. A property with a stale CERSAI entry from a closed loan confuses every future lender. The registry is public at CERSAIand a search there belongs in serious due diligence alongside the EC.

Company-seller checks.When the seller is a company or LLP, board resolutions authorising the sale come from the entity's filings, verify the entity itself and its signatories on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal. A director who signs without authority creates a defect the buyer inherits.

Seller-Side Terms: Capital Gains Without the Panic

Long-term versus short-term.Property held over 24 months qualifies as a long-term capital asset, with concessional tax treatment; under 24 months, gains tax at slab rates. The date arithmetic runs from the registered purchase, and for under-construction flats the counting rules have their own case law, one of several reasons the next term exists.

Section 54 and reinvestment.Long-term gains from a residential property reinvested into another residential property within the statutory windows can be exempt. The windows and conditions are precise, the mistakes are common, and the amounts are large. Our position is consistent: know the vocabulary from this dictionary, then buy an hour of a chartered accountant's time before signing anything. The current provisions live on the income tax portaland Karnataka-specific statutes on the state law department's site.

Indexation.The inflation adjustment applied to purchase cost when computing long-term gains under the applicable regime, the reason a property bought decades ago shows a smaller taxable gain than raw subtraction suggests. Regime choices here changed in recent budgets; this is exactly the paragraph where a dictionary hands you to a professional.

The seller's file.Everything this dictionary tells a buyer to demand is what a seller should assemble before listing: deed chain, EC, e-Khata in the current name, tax receipts, OC, loan closure and CERSAI release where applicable. A complete file shortens the sale by weeks and defends the price, buyers pay for certainty. Sellers preparing a Bangalore property this year should also skim the locality comparisonto price against the corridor, not against nostalgia. Karnataka's citizen services for most of these documents route through Seva Sindhuand the state portal at karnataka.gov.in.

Rapid Reference: 28 More Terms in Plain Language

The long entries above cover the load-bearing concepts. These shorter ones fill the rest of the vocabulary a Bangalore transaction throws at you, each in plain language, each with the one thing worth remembering.

Allotment letter.The builder's letter allotting a specific unit to you after booking, recording the unit, the price, and the payment plan. It precedes the agreement and is not ownership, but it is the document your booking amount hangs on, so read the cancellation and forfeiture clauses before paying, not after.

Bayana / token receipt.The written acknowledgment of an advance. The word receipt is doing heavy lifting: it should name the property, the total agreed price, the amount paid, and the refund conditions. A token handed over against a smile and a handshake is a donation, not a deal.

Khata transfer.Moving the municipal tax account into the new owner's name after registration, the city-limits form of mutation. Until it completes, the tax record still shows the seller, and the transaction is administratively unfinished.

Khata certificate versus Khata extract.The certificate states the account holder; the extract reproduces the record's details, dimensions, usage, tax assessment. Buyers usually need both, and under e-Khata the distinction is collapsing into a single QR-verified document.

PID.The Property Identification Number the corporation assigns to each property, the key that links the Khata, the tax record, and the payment portal. It sits printed on old tax receipts, and finding it is step one of most civic processes.

Lis pendens.Latin for a pending suit: a notation that the property is the subject of live litigation. Anything bought under lis pendens is bought subject to the case's outcome. It appears on the EC, which is one more reason the EC is non-negotiable.

Easement.A legal right someone else holds over your land, a neighbour's drainage line, a shared passage, a right of way to a landlocked plot behind yours. Easements survive the sale, which is why the physical inspection should ask what crosses the land, not just where the corners are.

Setback.The mandatory open space between the building and the plot boundary under the building bye-laws, varying with road width and building height. A structure eating into setbacks is a deviation, and deviations are the buyer's inheritance.

Plinth area.The built-up area measured at floor level including walls, the measure sanction plans and older documents often use, sitting between carpet and super built-up in the size vocabulary.

Common areas.Everything owned collectively in a project: lobbies, corridors, lifts, clubhouse, open spaces. Their upkeep is what CAM pays for, and their ownership sits with the association once handover completes, a builder who keeps title to common areas after handover is a dispute in waiting.

Car parking.Open parking spaces cannot legally be sold as independent real estate; covered parking within the sanctioned plan is treated differently. The practical takeaway: the parking allocation belongs in the agreement in writing, whatever the sales office promises verbally.

Possession letter.The builder's letter offering possession of the completed unit. It is meaningful only alongside the OC, possession offered without an occupancy certificate is an unfinished building changing hands, whatever the letterhead says.

Snag list.The defect list a buyer records at handover, cracks, seepage, fittings, finish. Walk the unit with the list before signing the possession acknowledgment; leverage drops sharply the day after.

Defect liability period.Under RERA, the builder remains liable for structural and workmanship defects for five years from possession, with a duty to rectify within thirty days of notice. Buyers forget this exists; builders rarely remind them.

Force majeure.The clause excusing delay for events beyond control. Read what the agreement counts as force majeure, an expansive clause that excuses everything is a possession date without a promise inside it.

Assignment.Selling an under-construction unit before registration by transferring the agreement to a new buyer, with builder consent and a transfer fee. The tax and duty treatment differs from a completed-property resale, take advice before assuming the economics.

Gift deed.A transfer without consideration, compulsorily registered, with concessional stamp duty for close family in Karnataka. A gift to a non-relative is taxed in the recipient's hands, the deed's stamp saving can be the smaller number in the equation.

Release deed.A co-owner or legal heir relinquishing their share, typically within family after inheritance. It cleans the title for the remaining owners and is registered like any conveyance.

Partition deed.The formal division of jointly held property into separate, individually owned shares. Until partition, every co-owner owns an undivided share of everything, which is why buying one heir's piece of an unpartitioned property buys a dispute.

Will versus succession.A registered will simplifies everything after an owner's death; without one, heirs establish rights through legal heir certificates and, where needed, succession certificates. When buying inherited property, every legal heir signs, a missing sibling's signature today is a court case in ten years.

Probate.Court validation of a will. Not universally mandatory in Karnataka, but banks and cautious buyers ask for it when the chain of title runs through a will, factor the time it takes.

Legal heir certificate.The revenue authority's certificate naming a deceased person's heirs, foundational to any inherited-property transaction. Its issuance runs through the local taluk office or online services.

Joint ownership.How co-owners hold the property, as joint tenants or tenants in common, decides what happens on a death and what each owner can independently sell. The deed's wording controls; most buyers never read it.

Co-applicant versus co-owner.A loan co-applicant shares the repayment obligation; a co-owner shares the title. The two do not automatically travel together, a spouse can be co-applicant without being co-owner, with tax and inheritance consequences either way.

Vacant land tax.Corporations levy property tax on vacant plots too, at rates that make holding unbuilt land inside city limits a carrying cost. Unpaid years surface at Khata transfer, with penalties attached.

Conversion charges versus betterment charges.Conversion charges pay for changing land use from agricultural; betterment charges pay for regularisation and infrastructure benefit. Different levies, different triggers, both non-optional when they apply.

Deviation and compounding.Construction beyond the sanctioned plan is a deviation; compounding is paying a penalty to regularise minor ones within permitted limits. Major deviations cannot be compounded, they are demolition risk priced into the property, whether the price admits it or not. The state's Akrama-Sakrama regularisation scheme has sat under judicial stay for years; a seller promising regularisation under it is selling you a court calendar.

Building bye-laws.The rulebook governing what can be built, setbacks, height, FAR, parking norms, administered by the corporations and planning authorities under the state framework, with financing-side standards influenced by bodies like the National Housing Bank. When a structure and the bye-laws disagree, the bye-laws eventually win; buy accordingly.

K-RERA agent registration.The registration every real estate agent needs to facilitate sales in registered projects, searchable on the Karnataka RERA portalalong with the projects themselves. Asking an agent for their registration number is not rude; it is the first due diligence of the relationship.

Payment Plans on Under-Construction Property: CLP, Down Payment, and the Subvention Trap

Construction-linked plan (CLP).The standard structure: payments release in slabs as construction milestones complete, foundation, each floor plate, brickwork, finishing, possession. The buyer's money follows the building, which is the entire point. A CLP keeps the builder funded exactly in proportion to delivered progress, and it keeps the buyer's exposure limited to what physically exists. When in doubt, this is the plan to choose, and the milestone certifications should come from the project architect or engineer, not from a sales executive's phone call.

Down payment plan.The buyer pays most of the price upfront, often 90 to 95 percent, in exchange for a discount, with the balance at possession. The discount is real; so is the risk. The buyer has financed the entire project risk for a single-digit price reduction, and if the project stalls, the discount becomes the most expensive saving they ever made. The escrow protections help, but recovering money from a stalled project is a process measured in years, not quarters.

Flexi and milestone hybrids.Most builders offer something between the two, a larger initial tranche than CLP, a smaller one than down payment, with the balance construction-linked. The evaluation method never changes: map every rupee against what exists on the ground on the date it leaves your account.

The subvention scheme.The marketing pitch runs: book now, pay nothing till possession, the builder pays your pre-EMI interest. Read the loan documents and the picture inverts, the loan is in the buyer's name, the disbursement goes to the builder, and if the builder stops paying the bank, the default lands on the buyer's credit record. Regulators have repeatedly restricted these structures for exactly this reason. Treat any no-EMI-till-possession offer as a signal to read everything twice and involve a professional before signing anything.

Escalation clauses.Some agreements permit the builder to raise the price for input cost increases. An open-ended escalation clause converts a fixed-price purchase into a variable one. If the clause cannot be deleted, it should at least be capped at a named percentage and tied to a published index, with the buyer's right to exit and refund if the cap is breached.

Society Formation and Handover: The Last Mile Nobody Reads About

Association formation.Once a threshold of units sells, the builder is obliged to form the owners' association, in Karnataka typically under the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act or as a society, and hand over its administration. The association is the legal owner-operator of the common areas and the counterparty for every future maintenance decision. Delayed formation keeps the builder in control of maintenance charges and common assets long after residents have moved in, which is why possession-stage buyers should ask a dated question: when does the association form, and what triggers it in writing?

Handover of common areas.The formal transfer of common areas, corpus funds, statutory approvals, as-built drawings, equipment warranties, and vendor contracts from the builder to the association. A clean handover includes audited accounts of every rupee of maintenance and corpus collected before the transfer. The single most useful document a new association can demand is the reconciliation between what buyers paid toward the corpus and what arrives in the association's account.

Corpus fund at handover.The one-time corpus collected from each buyer at possession belongs to the association, not the builder. Where it sits, who signs on it, and when it transfers are questions worth asking in writing at booking stage, years before handover makes them contentious.

The first annual general meeting.The moment control actually changes hands: committee elected, accounts adopted, maintenance agency either retained or replaced. Attend it. The owners who show up to the first AGM set the building's operating culture for a decade.

Guidance Value in Practice: How the Number Is Actually Checked

The dictionary entry earlier defined guidance value; here is how the check works in practice, because the definition alone has cost buyers real money. Guidance value in Karnataka is notified street by street and survey number by survey number, not as a city average, not as a locality slogan. Two plots a hundred meters apart can carry different notified values because they sit on different roads in the notification. The Kaveri portal's valuation lookup takes the district, the area, and the street or survey number, and returns the notified rate for that exact record, and that specific number, multiplied by your area, is the floor on which stamp duty is computed.

Three practical consequences follow. First, compute before you negotiate: if the guidance value is above your agreed price, duty is paid on the guidance value anyway, and your effective transaction cost just rose without the seller receiving a rupee more. Second, when a seller proposes registering below the agreed price to save duty, the guidance value is the reason it does not work, the Sub-Registrar's system computes duty on the notified floor regardless of what the deed claims, and undervaluation invites a demand notice with penalty on top. Third, guidance values are revised periodically, and a revision between your agreement and your registration date changes your duty arithmetic, one more reason not to let the gap between agreement and registration drift beyond the timeline written into the ATS.

The same lookup discipline applies to resale pricing. Sellers anchor on memory and neighbours' claims; buyers anchor on portal listings. The notified guidance value is the one number in the conversation that neither side controls, and starting a negotiation from it, then arguing premiums and discounts against verifiable facts like floor, facing, age, and OC status, produces faster agreements than duelling anecdotes ever do.

One last habit ties this whole section together: date every number. The guidance value you checked in March is not evidence in September if a revision landed between them. The duty slab that applied to your uncle's purchase is not the one that applies to yours. The registration fee doubled in 2025, the conversion window closes in August 2025, and the rebate calendar resets every spring. Real estate vocabulary is stable; real estate numbers are not. A buyer who writes the date next to every figure in their file, and rechecks anything older than a quarter before acting on it, has internalised the single discipline that separates careful money from lucky money.

RERA: The Protections Most Buyers Never Use

Karnataka RERA governs projects above the threshold of 500 square meters or eight units. A project must be registered before it is marketed, and the registration number must appear in every advertisement. The registry entry is public on the Karnataka RERA portaland its quarterly filings tell you the real construction status, litigation history, and sanctioned plan, two minutes of reading that beats an hour of sales-office claims. Agents themselves must hold K-RERA registration to facilitate sales in registered projects, which is worth confirming about anyone advising you. Verify the RERA number independently on the portal rather than trusting a brochure, registration numbers printed on aggregator sites have been found inconsistent more than once. And treat the pre-launch discount with the suspicion it deserves: marketing before registration is not permitted, and money paid at that stage sits outside the escrow protection entirely. If the discount depends on skipping the law, the discount is the risk. Explore live inventory by category on our property typeshub, our buying guidesand for tenants and landlords, the rental and lease guides.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a Khata proof of ownership?
No. Khata is the municipal tax account of a property. Ownership is proven by the registered sale deed supported by a clean chain of title and encumbrance certificate. A property can hold a perfect Khata and a broken title, and the reverse.

Can I buy a B-Khata property safely?
B-Khata means a compliance gap: most public-sector banks will not fund it, resale is discounted, and plan sanctions are unavailable. Until 23 August 2026, eligible B-Khata sites can convert to A-Khata at 2 percent of guidance value under the Bhu Guarantee window instead of the usual 5 percent. If a site qualifies, price the conversion into the deal; if it does not qualify, the honest answer is usually to walk away.

What is the total cost above the property price in Karnataka in 2026?
Roughly 7.6 percent statutory for a property above Rs 45 lakh: 5 percent stamp duty, plus 10 percent cess and 2 percent surcharge on that duty, plus the 2 percent registration fee that took effect on 31 August 2025. Legal fees sit on top, and for deals of Rs 50 lakh or more the buyer also deducts and deposits 1 percent TDS.

Is there a stamp duty concession for women buyers in Karnataka?
No. The gender-based concession was removed under the Registration (Karnataka Amendment) Act 2024. All buyers pay the same rates.

How many square feet is a gunta, and how many guntas make an acre?
One gunta is 1,089 square feet. Forty guntas make one acre of 43,560 square feet. Sale deeds record the same land in square meters, at 10.764 square feet per square meter.

What is the difference between carpet area and super built-up area?
Carpet area is the usable area inside your walls, and RERA requires sales to quote it. Super built-up adds your share of lobbies, corridors, and amenities, the loading, commonly 25 to 40 percent in Bangalore. A rate quoted on super built-up is always lower than the true carpet rate; always convert before comparing projects.

Is e-Khata really mandatory for registration?
Yes. Within city corporation limits, a property cannot be registered, sold, or transferred without a valid e-Khata. It downloads from the e-Aasthi portal using the SAS Property Tax ID from any earlier tax receipt, after Aadhaar eKYC.

What does a GPA sale mean, and is it legal?
A General Power of Attorney authorises someone to act for an owner, it does not transfer ownership. The Supreme Court held in 2011 that GPA transactions do not convey title. A property offered on a GPA basis should be treated as a walk-away signal.

How long does property registration take in Bangalore?
With the file complete, Kaveri slot booked, duty e-stamped, e-Khata in place, the registration itself typically completes the same day at the Sub-Registrar office. The real timeline lives in the due diligence weeks before that day, and rushing that stage is how expensive mistakes are made.

How do I check if a plot is affected by the Peripheral Ring Road?
Check the survey number against the notified alignment before anything else, roughly 2,560 acres across dozens of peripheral villages stand notified for the Bengaluru Business Corridor, and owners inside the alignment are barred from selling. The BDA holds the notified village and survey lists.

Do I still need a lawyer if the project is RERA registered?
Yes. RERA registration means the project cleared a regulatory filing, it does not verify the title chain, the seller's capacity, your agreement's specific clauses, or your loan documentation. RERA narrows the risk; an advocate's legal opinion on your specific file is what actually protects your money. The two work together, and skipping the second because the first exists is how buyers of registered projects still end up in disputes.

Does the e-Khata rule apply outside city corporation limits?
The e-Khata mandate applies within city corporation limits. Properties in Gram Panchayat areas run on the Form 9 and Form 10 system instead, with their own digitisation drive underway. Peripheral Bangalore buyers should first establish which jurisdiction the property actually sits in, corporation, panchayat, or a planning authority area, because that answer decides which Khata regime, which approvals, and which tax office apply to everything that follows.

Keep This Page Close

Bangalore rewards buyers who respect the paperwork and punishes the ones who treat it as a formality. The market itself, which corridor, which project, what price, is a separate conversation we have across the rest of this site, from NRI-specific guidanceto project pages like NorthernSky Excelsa in Mangaloreand plotted developments such as Fortune City in Gauribidanurand Erayaa in Jigani. The language and the law, though, are the same in every deal, and they are all on this page. When a term comes up that you cannot place, come back here, and when the file in front of you disagrees with what a seller is saying, believe the file.

Questions about a specific property or document? Call 7676870876, WhatsApp 9606230962, or write to reach@onecityproperty.com, a senior advisor reads every message.

Written by L K Monu Borkala, CEO & Founder, OneCity Property — 15 years of property consultancy experience and over 20 years in marketing and management at OneCity Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Related guides

• Khata registration in detail
• the registration process
• the B-Khata conversion deadline
• joint development agreements