New to government property

A development authority - a DDA, an LDA, a RIICO - holds land or flats it has built, and sells them itself. It publishes a notice naming every plot on offer, a reserve price for each, the deposit you must lodge to be allowed to bid, and the dates. You register on that authority's own portal, pay the fee and the EMD, and on the auction day you bid. There is no broker in the middle and no listing fee: the authority is the seller.

All of it closes before the auction. Registration, know-your-customer, the fee and the deposit have their own last date, usually days ahead of the bidding. Miss that date and the auction happens without you, whatever you are willing to pay.

SarkariProperty is watching 24 schemes that are open right now, from 73 authorities. It is not one of them, and nothing is bid, paid or applied for here - every one of those happens on the authority's portal, which every scheme page links to.

Three different mechanisms, and which one a scheme uses decides what your money is at risk for.

• e-Auction. Competitive bidding above a published floor. The reserve is not the price - the plot sells for whatever the bidding reaches. You lodge an EMD to take part, and get it back if you do not win. 141 of the 253 schemes on this site work this way.
• Lucky draw. A draw among everyone who applied and paid the registration amount. The price is fixed in advance, so you know the cost before you commit - what you do not know is whether you get anything at all. 56 schemes here are allotted this way.
• First come first served. No bidding and no draw. Units are sold at the published price to whoever books first, and the scheme stays open until they run out. 13 schemes here work this way, which is why they often have no closing date on the page: the inventory is the deadline.

A fourth thing appears and is not a scheme at all. A demand survey asks whether there is interest before an authority builds. It takes no money, creates no claim and gives you no place in a queue. 2 are running now, and the page says plainly that it is not an application.

An earnest money deposit is a refundable sum you lodge before bidding, to show you are serious. It is adjusted into the price if you win and returned if you do not. It is not a fee.

How it is set differs by authority, and the difference is large. RIICO takes 5% of the reserve with a floor of ₹25,000. MDA publishes a rupee figure per plot, around 10% of the reserve. CHB uses fixed slabs. Every scheme page on this site prints the EMD the authority published, per plot where it publishes one.

The EMD is forfeited if you win and then do not pay. That is the single most expensive mistake available in a plot auction, and it is made by people who bid past what they had arranged to fund.

The reserve price is the lowest bid the authority will accept. It is a floor, not a valuation and not a sale price. A plot with a reserve of ₹36 lakh can close far above it, and in a contested auction usually does.

SarkariProperty publishes the reserve because that is what the authority published. It never estimates what a plot will sell for, and it never prints a "market value" - nobody publishes one for these plots, and a number with no source behind it is worse than no number.

The reserve is also not the circle rate. Stamp duty is charged on the higher of what you paid and the state's own minimum valuation, so a plot bought near its reserve can still attract duty computed on a larger figure.

More than the advertised price, and sooner than most people expect. In order:

• Before you can bid: the registration or brochure fee, usually with 18% GST, and the EMD.
• Within weeks of winning: a first tranche, commonly 25% of the value less the EMD. MDA allows 90 days for it, RIICO 30.
• On top of the bid: the location premium where the plot is a corner, park-facing or on a wide road; the freehold conversion charge where the plot is leasehold - 12% at MDA; GST, which on a non-industrial RIICO plot is 18% of the entire land premium; stamp duty and registration; and 1% TDS where the value is ₹50 lakh or more.
• Then: the balance, as a lump sum or instalments carrying interest - 9.70% at MDA over three years.

This is why every plot on this site has a full costing rather than a price. The advertised figure is the start of the bill, not the bill. The cheapest single property currently transcribed here reserves at ₹1.08 L, and it will still not cost ₹1.08 L.

You do not own anything yet. The highest bid is normally accepted "subject to confirmation", which means a committee still has to approve it. What follows is a sequence of dated obligations, each of which can undo the last:

• The allotment letter, which is the formal offer and starts the payment clock.
• The first tranche, within the window that letter states. Missing it usually cancels the allotment and forfeits the EMD.
• The balance, in full or in instalments at the authority's rate.
• Execution and registration of the deed, which carries its own deadline - six months at MDA, then ₹1,000 a month.
• Possession, which is not the same as registration, and which on a plot in a new sector can be years ahead of the services reaching it.

• Treating the last date as the auction date. Registration, KYC, the fee and the EMD close first, often several days first. That earlier date is the one that decides whether you can bid.
• Budgeting the advertised price. Premium, freehold charge, GST, stamp duty and registration are on top, and on a leasehold plot they are not small.
• Bidding past what is arranged. Winning and not paying forfeits the EMD and loses the plot.
• Ignoring the category. It means two unrelated things. RIICO's is environmental and limits which industry may occupy the plot. MVDA's is a reservation and limits who may bid at all. A reserved plot rejects an outside bid whatever it offers.
• Reading the brochure and not the corrigendum. A corrigendum overrides the document it amends, and dates and prices move in them. Every scheme page here groups changes since publication first, for that reason.
• Assuming a demand survey is an application. It takes no money and gives no place in a queue.
• Paying anybody who is not the authority. There is no agent, no facilitation fee and no priority list. Every payment happens on the authority's own portal.

Nine steps from finding a scheme to holding the keys, with what each one costs and what goes wrong in it.

How to buy government property, step by step