Buyers usually understand the booking and the handover. The eighteen months in between are less clear. Here is the sequence.
Booking to agreement
You pay a booking amount and receive an allotment letter. Within a few weeks the agreement for sale is prepared. Under RERA this must be executed and registered once you have paid 10% of the consideration.
Read it before signing. This is the document that governs everything afterwards.
Loan sanction and disbursement
Your lender sanctions against your income and the property. Disbursement then follows construction, not the calendar — the bank releases tranches as milestones are certified.
During construction you typically pay pre-EMI, which is interest only on the amount disbursed so far. Full EMI begins after final disbursement.
Through construction
Payments fall due as milestones are reached — foundation, each slab, brickwork, plastering, finishing. Your agreement should specify these.
Ask for progress updates and visit periodically. RERA requires quarterly updates on the portal; compare them against what you see.
As completion approaches
The developer applies for the occupancy certificate. This is the point at which the building is legally fit for occupation, and it matters for GST, for possession, and for utility connections.
You will receive a demand for final payment, usually including registration charges, corpus and advance maintenance.
Registration
The sale deed is executed and registered at the Sub-Registrar's office. Stamp duty and registration fees are paid here. This is the transaction that actually transfers ownership — the agreement for sale did not.
Both parties attend, or an attorney acts under a properly executed power of attorney.
Handover
You receive the possession letter and keys. Before accepting, conduct a snagging inspection and record defects in writing. Once you take possession without recording defects, resolving them becomes harder.
Get meters transferred, and collect the documents: sale deed, OC, approved plans, warranties.
Afterwards
Mutation — getting the property recorded in your name for property tax. Society formation and handover of the corpus, which under RERA should follow within a defined period. And the defect liability period, five years for structural defects.
The pattern
Each stage has a document. Keep them all, in order, in one place. When you sell in ten years, that file is what makes the transaction straightforward.
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