The Indian real estate glossary

Agreement value

The consideration written into the registered agreement for sale — the number the buyer and seller have formally agreed. Stamp duty is charged on the higher of the agreement value and the ready reckoner value, not automatically on the agreement value. Since 2022, TDS under section 194-IA is also computed on the higher of the consideration and the stamp duty value, so a discounted agreement value does not reduce either liability as much as buyers expect.

Allotment letter

The letter a developer issues confirming that a specific unit has been allotted to a buyer, usually after the booking amount is paid and before the agreement for sale is executed. It typically records the unit number, the agreed consideration, the payment schedule and the expected possession date. It is not a title document and does not by itself transfer any interest in the property.

Blind indexKeyed HMAC index, searchable encryption index

A one-way keyed hash of a field — a phone number, say — stored alongside the encrypted value so the system can find an exact match without holding the field in readable form. It is what lets a CRM tell you "this buyer already exists" without the server needing to read the number. It only supports exact lookups: you cannot sort, range-scan or partially match a blind index, which is why it is used for deduplication rather than for search.How SaudaFlow protects your data

Booking amountToken amount, token money

The first payment a buyer makes to reserve a unit, usually a small percentage of the consideration. In practice it is the moment a lead becomes a booking, and the moment your inventory should stop showing that unit as available. Whether it is refundable, and on what terms, depends entirely on what the allotment letter says — which is why the terms belong in writing before the money moves.

BrokerageCommission

The fee a broker or channel partner earns for sourcing a buyer, usually stated as a percentage of the agreement value and often split between the sourcing firm and the closing one. It is normally invoiced after registration, sometimes in tranches tied to payment milestones, and TDS under section 194H applies. Ageing matters more than most firms track: brokerage that is ninety days late is a working-capital problem, not an accounting one.Brokerage and commission tracking

BSP (Business Solution Provider)WhatsApp BSP

An authorised partner that resells access to the WhatsApp Business API with tooling wrapped around it. Most Indian CRMs reach WhatsApp this way, which works well and is quick to ship — it adds a margin on top of Meta’s own per-conversation rate, and puts a second company in the path when a template is rejected or a number goes into review. The alternative is connecting to Meta’s Cloud API directly, which means you hold the WhatsApp Business Account yourself.How WhatsApp works in SaudaFlow

Built-up area

Carpet area plus the area occupied by the walls — internal partition walls and the buyer’s share of external walls — and, in most builder definitions, the balcony. It sits between carpet area and super built-up area, and is typically around 10-15% more than carpet, though there is no statutory definition forcing that. RERA requires disclosure in carpet area, so built-up is now mostly used in internal calculations rather than in what a buyer is quoted.

Carpet area

The net usable floor area within the walls of the flat, as defined by RERA: it excludes the external walls, service shafts, the exclusive balcony or verandah and the exclusive open terrace, but includes the internal partition walls. This is the only area figure a developer may legally advertise and sell on under RERA, which is precisely why the term exists in the statute at all. If a quote is in super built-up, ask for the carpet figure — the difference is usually 25-40%.

CC (Commencement Certificate)

The permission issued by the local planning authority allowing construction to begin, granted once plans are sanctioned and the statutory conditions are met. A project advertising sales without a CC is a warning sign, and RERA registration generally requires it. Buyers and lenders both check it, so it belongs in your project documentation from day one.

Channel partnerCP, associate broker

An external broker or firm registered with a developer to source buyers, paid a brokerage on bookings they bring. Most Indian primary sales run substantially on channel-partner distribution, which makes attribution — who introduced this buyer, and when — a commercially significant record rather than a bookkeeping detail. Disputes almost always turn on the date of first registration of the lead, so that timestamp is worth protecting.SaudaFlow for channel partners

CNR (Could Not Reach)

A call disposition for a dial that did not connect at all — switched off, out of coverage, or ringing with no answer. It is distinct from a connected call where the person declined to talk, and the distinction matters because a CNR should trigger a retry while a genuine refusal should not. Firms use the abbreviation inconsistently, so agree what it means internally before you report on it.Call tracking and dispositions

Conveyance deed

The instrument that transfers title of the land and building — most commonly from the developer to the co-operative housing society once the project is complete and the society is formed. Deemed conveyance is the statutory remedy in Maharashtra when a developer will not execute it. It is separate from the individual sale agreement each flat buyer signs, and its absence is a common defect surfaced in due diligence years after possession.

Cost sheet

The itemised price break-up given to a buyer: base rate on carpet area, floor rise, preferential location charge, parking, club and infrastructure charges, maintenance deposit, GST, stamp duty and registration. It is the single most-shared document in Indian property sales and the one most often wrong, because it is usually rebuilt by hand in Excel for each buyer. A wrong cost sheet loses deals and occasionally creates a legal problem.Cost sheets in SaudaFlow

Data Fiduciary

The DPDP Act 2023 term for the entity that determines the purpose and means of processing personal data — in a property business, your firm. The obligations attach to you rather than to whichever system holds the file, which is why a buyer database sitting in a shared spreadsheet on several personal laptops is a compliance exposure regardless of who created it. Your CRM vendor is typically a Data Processor acting on your instructions.DPDP Act compliance in SaudaFlow

Data Principal

The DPDP Act 2023 term for the individual whose personal data is being processed — in practice, your buyer. Data Principals have rights to access, correction, erasure and grievance redressal, and a business needs a working process for honouring them rather than a policy page that promises to. The practical test is whether you could locate and delete every copy of one buyer’s data within a reasonable time.Data Principal rights workflow

Data residency

Where data is physically stored, as distinct from where the company that holds it is registered. It matters for Indian property firms because buyer data is personal data, and because developers and enterprise clients increasingly ask the question in writing during procurement. A multi-region vendor can usually host you in India if you ask; a single-region vendor cannot host you anywhere else, which is a different kind of assurance.Where SaudaFlow keeps your data

DeduplicationDedupe

Recognising that two enquiries are the same person and merging them into one record. In Indian real estate the same buyer routinely arrives through a portal, a WhatsApp message and a walk-in within a fortnight, and without deduplication that is three rows and two agents calling with different prices. Matching is normally on a normalised phone number, which is why E.164 formatting matters more than it sounds.Lead management and deduplication

DispositionCall outcome, call status

The outcome recorded against a call — connected, not connected, could not reach, site visit scheduled, not interested, wrong number. Dispositions are what turn call volume into a usable funnel, because a report on dials tells you effort while a report on dispositions tells you progress. They only work if the vocabulary is short and everyone uses the same words, which is an argument for fewer options rather than more.Call logging and dispositions

DLT registrationDistributed Ledger Technology registration, TRAI DLT

The TRAI-mandated process of registering your business as a principal entity, along with your sender headers and message templates, on a telecom operator’s DLT platform before you can send commercial SMS in India. It exists to control unsolicited commercial communication and it is not optional. Budget two to three weeks: the registration itself, header approval and template approval are separate steps and each has its own queue.

DPDP Act 2023Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023

India’s personal data protection statute, which sets out consent requirements, purpose limitation, the rights of Data Principals and the obligations of Data Fiduciaries. For a property business the practical consequences are concrete: you need a lawful basis for holding buyer data, a way to honour access and deletion requests, and an answer to who inside your firm and your vendors can see it. It applies to a spreadsheet exactly as much as to a CRM.DPDP Act 2023 and SaudaFlow

E.164

The international standard format for telephone numbers: a plus sign, the country code, then the subscriber number, with no spaces or punctuation and a maximum of fifteen digits. An Indian mobile in E.164 is +919812345678. It matters because deduplication, WhatsApp delivery and caller ID matching all break when the same number is stored five different ways, which is exactly what happens in a spreadsheet maintained by six people.

Encumbrance certificateEC

A record from the sub-registrar showing the registered transactions and charges against a property over a stated period — sales, mortgages, liens. Buyers and lenders use it to confirm the title is clean for the period examined. It only reflects what was registered, so it does not surface unregistered arrangements or disputes that never reached the registry.

EOI (Expression of Interest)

A small, usually refundable amount collected before a formal launch to gauge and hold demand, often with a promise of priority in unit selection. It is a sales instrument rather than a legal one, and it is not a booking — the unit is not blocked and the price is frequently not final. Pre-launch collection has RERA implications, so a project that has not yet registered should be careful about what an EOI is said to secure.

Floor rise

A premium added to the base rate for higher floors, usually expressed as an amount per square foot per floor above a stated base, sometimes stepped in bands rather than charged linearly. It can add several lakh to a high-floor unit in a tall tower and it is one of the most common sources of cost-sheet arithmetic errors. Where the charge starts, and whether it is per floor or per band, differs by project and must come from the price master rather than memory.Floor rise and PLC in cost sheets

Freehold and leasehold

Freehold means the land is owned outright and can be transferred without a lessor’s permission. Leasehold means it is held for a term from a lessor — frequently a development authority — with transfer typically requiring consent and payment of a transfer charge, and with a finite, sometimes renewable, term. Lenders treat the two differently and the distinction affects both price and saleability.

FSIFAR, Floor Space Index, Floor Area Ratio

The ratio of permissible built-up area to plot area, set by local development control regulations. It determines how much can be built on a piece of land and is therefore the central variable in project feasibility. Additional FSI is often purchasable as premium or TDR, which is why two adjacent plots with identical area can support very different projects.

GST on property

GST applies to the sale of an under-construction property, currently at 5% for non-affordable and 1% for affordable housing, both without input tax credit. The sale of a completed property — one for which the occupancy certificate has been received — is outside the scope of GST, which is why the OC date is a pricing event and not just a compliance one. Rates and conditions change by notification, so confirm the current position with your CA before it goes on a cost sheet.

Home loan sanction letter

The lender’s written commitment to advance a stated amount to a specific buyer, subject to conditions and valid for a limited period. A sanctioned buyer is materially closer to booking than an interested one, which is why the sanction is worth recording as a state on the lead rather than as a note. Sanction is not disbursement: the money moves later, against the payment schedule and after legal and technical clearance of the property.

Inventory

The sellable stock, held as a hierarchy: project, tower or wing, floor, unit. Each unit carries its own configuration, carpet area, base rate, view or facing, and status — available, blocked, booked, registered. Keeping status accurate across a sales team is the difference between confidently quoting a unit and discovering at the closing table that a colleague sold it on Saturday.Inventory management

KhataA khata, B khata

A municipal property record used in Karnataka, primarily Bengaluru, recording the property and the person liable for property tax. An A khata property is on the main register with its approvals in order; a B khata property sits on a separate register maintained for properties with irregularities. Banks lend far more readily against A khata, so the distinction directly affects both price and the buyer pool.

Lead source

Where an enquiry originated — a specific portal, a Meta or Google campaign, a hoarding, a channel partner, a referral, a walk-in. Source is only useful if it is captured at the point of arrival and never overwritten, because the question worth answering is not which source produced the most enquiries but which produced bookings. Source-level cost per booking is the number that changes how a marketing budget is spent.Source reporting and dashboards

LoadingLoading factor

The percentage by which the super built-up area exceeds the carpet area, representing the buyer’s share of common areas. A 30% loading on 1,000 sq ft carpet gives a 1,300 sq ft saleable figure. Because a lower headline rate on a higher loading can cost more than the reverse, comparing two projects on rate per square foot is meaningless unless both are quoted on carpet.

MahaRERA

The Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority, established under RERA, which registers projects and agents in the state and maintains a public database of registrations, approvals, complaints and quarterly progress updates. Every advertisement for a registered project must carry the MahaRERA registration number. The public portal is the fastest independent check available on a project or an agent.

Maintenance depositCorpus fund, sinking fund

A lump sum collected from the buyer at possession, held towards the ongoing upkeep of the building and typically transferred to the society once it is formed. It usually appears as a separate line on the cost sheet and is quoted either per square foot or as a fixed number of months of maintenance. Buyers frequently miss it when comparing offers, so it belongs in the break-up rather than in the fine print.

NC (Not Connected)

A call disposition for a dial that failed to reach the person — busy, disconnected mid-ring, or answered by someone else. Some firms use NC to mean "not contactable" and others "not connected", and a few use it for "not interested", which is a materially different outcome. Whatever your firm decides, write it down once and make the CRM enforce that vocabulary.Call dispositions in SaudaFlow

NRI seller and section 195

When the seller of an Indian property is a non-resident, TDS falls under section 195 rather than section 194-IA, at rates that differ from the resident 1% and generally require the buyer to hold a TAN. The buyer carries the liability, so getting it wrong is the buyer’s problem and not the seller’s. This is a case where general guidance is genuinely inadequate — the parties need a chartered accountant on the specific transaction.

OC (Occupancy Certificate)

The certificate issued by the local authority confirming a building has been completed in accordance with the sanctioned plans and is fit for occupation. It is the point at which possession can lawfully be given, at which utilities are regularised, and at which the sale of a unit moves outside the scope of GST. A project offering possession without an OC is asking buyers to take a risk they usually do not understand.

PLC (Preferential Location Charge)

A premium for a unit considered better located within the project — park facing, corner, sea view, away from the road, a particular direction. It is charged per square foot or as a lump sum, and unlike floor rise it does not follow a formula: it is a commercial judgment recorded in the price master. Because it is discretionary, it is the line most often negotiated and the line most often mis-stated on a cost sheet.Cost sheets with PLC and floor rise

Possession

Handover of the unit to the buyer, lawfully possible only after the occupancy certificate is received and normally conditional on all dues being cleared. The agreement for sale states a possession date, and delay against that date carries consequences under RERA. In practice the sequence is OC, then possession letter, then handover, then society formation.

Primary and resale

A primary sale is the first sale of a unit from the developer; a resale is any subsequent sale between owners. They are different businesses in almost every respect — GST applies to under-construction primary sales but not to a completed resale, brokerage economics differ, the documentation differs, and the buyer’s decision process differs. A CRM that treats them identically will misreport both.

Ready reckoner rateCircle rate, guidance value, collector rate

The government-notified minimum valuation for a property in a given locality, published annually and known by different names across states. Stamp duty is charged on the higher of the agreement value and the ready reckoner value, so a transaction recorded below the notified rate does not reduce duty. It is also a useful independent reference point when a buyer questions whether a quoted price is reasonable.

Registration

The recording of the agreement for sale or sale deed with the sub-registrar under the Registration Act, which is what makes the instrument admissible as evidence and gives it effect against third parties. The registration fee is commonly around 1% of the value and is capped in several states — Maharashtra caps it at ₹30,000. Registration is a separate step from stamping and both must be completed within the statutory time limits.

RERAReal Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016

The central statute regulating Indian real estate, implemented through state authorities. It requires registration of projects above a threshold and of agents, mandates sale on carpet area, requires a proportion of collections to be held in a designated project account, and provides a complaint mechanism for buyers. The registration number must appear in every advertisement, and the state authority’s public database is where anyone can verify it.

Sale deed

The instrument that transfers ownership of a property from seller to buyer, executed on stamp paper and registered with the sub-registrar. In a resale it is the principal title document; in a primary sale it typically follows the agreement for sale and the completion of payments. A buyer’s title chain is essentially the sequence of registered sale deeds preceding theirs.

Site visitSV

The buyer visiting the project or sample flat — the single highest-signal event in the Indian property funnel, and the point at which a lead stops being speculative. Because so much depends on it, the discipline that matters is recording the visit as it happens rather than reconstructing it later: who attended, when, with which agent, and what the outcome was. Site-visit-to-booking ratio is the most useful conversion number most firms are not tracking.Site visit tracking

Stamp duty

A state duty on the instrument of transfer, charged on the higher of the agreement value and the ready reckoner value. Rates are set by each state and change with notifications and budgets — in Maharashtra the total commonly falls in the 5-6% range including applicable cess for urban areas, and several states offer a concession where the buyer is a woman. Confirm the current rate for the specific district before it goes on a cost sheet.

Super built-up areaSaleable area

Built-up area plus the buyer’s proportionate share of common areas — lobbies, staircases, lifts, clubhouse, sometimes amenity space. It has no statutory definition, which means two developers can compute it differently on the same building. RERA requires disclosure and sale on carpet area precisely because super built-up quotes were not comparable, though the term survives in everyday conversation.

SV (Site Visit)

The shorthand used across Indian sales floors both for the event and for the call disposition that schedules it — "SV done", "SV scheduled for Sunday". As a disposition it is the most important one to capture accurately, because SV-scheduled and SV-completed drive completely different follow-up. Counting scheduled visits as completed ones is the most common way a pipeline report ends up overstated.Site visits and check-ins

SyndicationPortal syndication, listing syndication

Publishing your inventory from one system out to multiple property portals — 99acres, MagicBricks, Housing and others — instead of maintaining each listing by hand. The hard parts are not the upload: they are keeping availability in step across portals, deduplicating the leads that come back, and handling rate limits at peak hours. SaudaFlow has the framework built and it is not switched on yet, so portal leads currently arrive by email parsing or CSV.Integrations and portal roadmap

TDS under section 194-IA

Tax deducted at source by the buyer on the purchase of immovable property from a resident, at 1% where the consideration or the stamp duty value is ₹50 lakh or more. Since 2022 the deduction is computed on the higher of the consideration and the stamp duty value. The obligation sits with the buyer, who deposits it against the seller’s PAN — a different section and a different rate from the 194H deduction on brokerage.

TDS under section 194H

Tax deducted at source on commission or brokerage paid to a resident, at 2% with effect from 1 October 2024, reduced from the earlier 5%. Anyone paying brokerage above the threshold must deduct, deposit and report it, and a system still calculating at the old rate creates a reconciliation problem for the accounts team rather than a software one. It applies to channel-partner payouts exactly as it applies to in-house brokerage.Brokerage with TDS handled

TRAITelecom Regulatory Authority of India

The regulator whose rules govern how Indian businesses may contact people by telephone and SMS, including the DLT registration regime for commercial messaging and the requirements around consent and recording disclosure. For a property business the practical consequence is that call recording requires a disclosure to the other party before the recording starts, and it must be in a language they understand. Hardcoding that disclosure in English is not compliance.Compliance in the AI voice agent

Walk-in

A buyer who arrives at the site or sales office without a prior enquiry. Walk-ins convert well and are systematically under-recorded, because there is no digital trace to force a record — the lead exists only if someone types it in while the buyer is standing there. Capturing them at the desk, on a phone, in under thirty seconds is the only version of this that survives a busy Sunday.Capturing leads on the phone

WhatsApp Business Cloud API

Meta’s hosted API for sending and receiving WhatsApp messages as a business, billed on a conversation model. Business-initiated messages must use templates approved by Meta, which usually takes 24 to 48 hours and occasionally longer, and there is a 24-hour service window after a customer message during which free-form replies are allowed. A business can connect directly or through a BSP; connecting directly means the WhatsApp Business Account is registered to the business itself.WhatsApp CRM

Where these terms turn into software

The three pages people usually read after this one.