Step by Step guide to buying a plot in India

STEP1 – Be clear about your objective

What are you going to do with the land? - are you going to build a building or leave it vacant for re-sell?

What is your budget? And importantly, what is the source of fund? – Source of fund has implications on taxation (income tax, capital gains tax etc.)

In whose name would it get registered? – Some states provide discount in stamp duty for female owners.

How would the property be used for - Commercial, residential, Industrial or Mixed? Check the city planning zones to verify if mixed use is permitted or not.

Hot-Tip – It is better to plan for requirements considering a time-span of next 15-20 years.

STEP2 – Based on your requirement, make a short-list

First start from choosing the location. Location is the single most important factor in real-estate.

It always wise to short-list a few properties and do preliminary screening for more than one property, because some of them are most likely to be rejected at later stage due to some or other issues.

It is useful to consider current and future economic activities in the surroundings, connectivity to public transport, proximity to market, bank, hospital, schools etc.

Do personally visit the property during day and night time as well do assess the locality and surroundings better. It would be a good idea to take your spouse and kids also with you. They may notice somethings that you might have missed or ignored e.g. garbage dumping near the site, a bar nearby or things like that.

Hot-Tip – Once you start looking for different options at multiple locations, you tend to gather new information about future developments and other factors that you might have missed. 

STEP3 – Be well prepared for the negotiation

Once you are ready with your short-list, be well prepared for price negotiation. Normally, the negotiations would happen before you go for further for legal and other verifications. Do your home-work properly and gather information on prevailing market condition and rates for that locality. Usually, the work done during previous should provide sufficient basic information for this step. Also, you should clearly specify the amount of brokerage that you would pay, if applicable.

Hot-Tip – Local real-estate agents and online portal are good point to start with.

Hot-Tip - Prefer to do negotiation with the rightful owner and not with his agents.

Hot-Tip – Do not try to close deal in hurry. There is always time to go for second round of negotiations.

STEP4 - Take Legal Opinion

It is an essential step to make sure that the property has clear marketable title, has all necessary government approvals and free from encumbrances.

Get ready with the documents when you approach the legal expert.

Useful list of some important documents -

• Sale Deed/Mother Deed and all deeds of transfer in between Government Approvals – DC Conversion, Betterment charges Receipt
• Khata Certificate/Khata Extract
• R.T.C extracts, Mutation Records (MR) copy
• Land Sketch/City survey sketch/Map
• Municipal/Panchayat Tax paid receipts
• Encumbrance Certificate (EC) for past 33 years
• Power of Attorney (POA) attested by Embassy Official, if seller is NRI

Hot-Tip – Getting legal opinion from SBI empanelled lawyer is cost effective, even if you are not taking loan from SBI. Also ensure that the lawyer provides you the written title investigation and search report.

Hot-Tip – Better to get legal opinion from two lawyers, if you are not sure about the lawyer’s credentials.

Hot-Tip – Get the certified copies of all past sale deeds and encumbrance certificate yourself. Do not blindly trust the documents given by owner.

Hot-Tip – Do all possible online searches/checks, as far as possible. E.g. Cases pending in high court, RTC and MR data, Tax paid data etc.

Hot-Tip - Take extra caution if the land is inherited due to complicated inheritance laws. If there are more than one owner, it would be wise to get a "release certificate"/NOC from everyone involved before going ahead with the process.

Hot-Tip – Also, verify that the land is in peaceful possession of the current owner. Sometimes, papers are all correct but possession lies with another person (legally or illegally). Better to avoid such properties.

STEP5 - Do Physical measurement and local verification 

Measure the property and make sure its dimension and boundary description matches with the details in the documents.

Also, do enquire about the property from neighbors and try to find out about any litigation or other issues (e.g. past history of the land - burial ground/lake bed etc.)

Hot-Tip – Do not make monetary commitment before you are sure about the above points.

STEP6 – Enter into the “Agreement to sale" deed

Applicable, if the title transfer is not going to happen immediately. Ensure the exit clause for you and seller is clearly specified and agreed. It also the time to approach financial institutions for loan, as the case may be.

Hot-Tip – It is always advisable to make all payments by cheque/DD/Banking channel.

Hot-Tip – Take professional help for documentation.
Hot-Tip - It might be helpful to get some activity done on the land to verify the prossession- e.g. you may get some type of fencing done or digging the foundation for compound wall etc.

STEP7- Title Transfer or Deed of Absolute Sale

When you are ready for title transfer, get the deed document prepared with a professional, do thorough proof reading and pay proper stamp duty as per law and get the title transferred along-with conveyance and possession.

Hot-Tip – Take professional help for documentation.

Some useful resources collected from Web-

Bangalore-Development-Authority-Zoning-Regulations-RMP2015 - 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_HgBcXidHgNVDVqNkxESlFuZzQ  
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_HgBcXidHgNVDVqNkxESlFuZzQ

Fundamentals of Documentation and Registration -  
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_HgBcXidHgNV29uRjRmdmg0TTQ/view?usp=sharing 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_HgBcXidHgNV29uRjRmdmg0TTQ/view?usp=sharing

Are you missing the Basics?

Are you still pondering about the poor sales? Are you cribbing about the ad spend that did not deliver? Most likely you are also one of many, who forgot to consider consumer behavior as part of your strategy.

Many professionals who plan and execute fancy marketing projects, either ignore the consumer behavior or don’t have a clue about their consumer’s behaviour impacting their buying decisions.
Most of the times, they do pay right attention to "fulfilling the need” or “solving the pain/problem" ,"positioning", "segmentation", “Value proposition” etc., but often miss the intangible part of the equation that is consumer behavior.

They have a great product/service that solves the pain-areas of the targeted customer, they position it correctly vis-a-vis their competitors, but still their customers don’t buy their product/service. Why? Because, may be they did not pay attention to how their customer makes a buying decision.

If you ignore the consumer's behavior, then your consumers are going to ignore you.

Consider, for example the automobile purchase. Do the customers have a short-list before they visit the show-room/test drive?
Do they have the similar short-list before they visit a financial service provider involving similar investment?
What does a customer do before they make up their mind to buy a certain product and then how do they finally chose a specific product.
Asking these basic questions can help you pay attention to what you might be missing.

How to fix the Talent Problem

We keep listening to senior executives emphasize the ever growing need for talented employee and how difficult it has become to get right talent for the job.

Also, increasingly you would hear them talk about the significance of the Talent Management and and how it has become strategic in the current environment. They also claim to have a good TM practices. But at the same time, they keep complaining about the shortage of talent and how they are not able to hire right talent.

They are puzzled by the fact that despite having a good reputation/image, compensating better than the peers, providing exciting opportunities to grow etc. still ending up with Mediocre Talent.
They are often confused about this situation of ending up with Mediocre Talent even though everything else seems to be right. They claim do all the right things but still not able to resolve the issue. If you ask them what is the reason, more often than not they dont have a clue where they are going wrong. They do not know what to fix first.

My recommendation to them is to consider using principles of Theory of Constraints.

If they do some basic analysis, it will be surprising for many that the weak-link( bottle-necks) exist right at the beginning of the chain – the Talent Manager/Hiring Team.

Who have not experienced the hiring team’s sheer incompetence to understand the business model and the key talent/skills needed for the organization. It starts right from poor Job Descriptions, that set the bar very high and intimidate an honest and skilled professional (who does not like to exaggerate accomplishments) or having outright wrong qualifications/skills mentioned or too broad requirement to be meaningful for the right target.

Have you not come across a JD for middle level manager that sounds like a JD for VP?
Who does not have a first-hand experience of an HR manager not able to comprehend the difference between similar sounding educational qualifications but varying widely in terms of content and quality (e.g. BCA/ B.Sc. Computer Sc /B Tech Computer Sc ) and also their lack of understanding of related but different domains e.g. Sales and Marketing, Finance and Accounting etc.

So, it is very important to fix the Talent Acquisition Team first before you address other issues. It is important to first bring right talent to the talent management team. Bring some diversity in the HR department by inducting people from business function. But, please do not be complacent. Find the next bottleneck and fix it too and do it again and keep doing it!

Is it worth investing in ERP?

Many CIOs have a problem in understanding themselves or making the board understand the need for more investment in their existing ERP infrastructure. They argue that we already have a stable ERP system and our core processes have not changed much then why should we invest more in upgrading the existing ERP infrastructure?

Frankly, it is difficult to calculate direct benefit realization just by upgrading it but having said that we must not lose the sight of indirect benefits that we may accrue by doing so. Hence, it may make a compelling case to invest more in the existing ERP infra.

Other than the obvious benefits of having an upgraded ERP infra like continued support from OEM without any premium fees and getting some new feature and functions etc. we must look at the indirect advantages that can be achieved by making the ERP infrastructure e.g. ability to achieve the next level of innovation.

In the current world, ERP is no longer considered an innovation in itself but it does provide a solid foundation to create more opportunities for innovations that can not only enhance your business model but may radically transform your business.

So, the organizations need to review if their current ERP infra can support new innovations that add value to the business e.g. are you able to leverage cloud solutions/mobile solutions/analytics/social solutions/Big Data etc.

My recommendation would be to do an assessment of complete ERP infrastructure including the Hardware and Software components. It might be a good idea to upgrade the Hardware infra first and then do the upgrade of applications. No one size fits all and hence we need to consider the context and then move from there.

To Bell or not?

Nowadays, everyone has started questioning the relevance of Bell curve and many organizations have begun to scrap it. But what is wrong with the Bell curve? And who is the culprit- The tool or its practitioners who mindlessly apply everywhere.
My vote goes for it wrong application.
The below list can provide a guidance when to apply it and when to avoid it.

 

*I arbitrarily recommend minimum size of 40.

My Top 10 List: East Vs West

Project Management: What they do not teach you

Every experienced project manager would tell you that having a formal certification is just the foundation and you need to be more aware of ground reality than the text book frameworks. Of course the frameworks are useful but they are not sufficient.


Below mentioned are the top 10 things that they do not teach you in school.

1. Politics is reality and you cannot avoid it.
2. Finding right resources is the biggest challenge, not only in terms of skills but the commitment also. You would be lucky if you get a team where at least 50% members are excited to be the part of the project. Most of them would be neutral and many would be even anti-project!
3. Business cases for the project may be based on lot of invalid assumptions. Thus it becomes very difficult to realize the benefits expected and hence the team and key stakeholders lose the interest half-way.
4. You can’t take sponsors commitment to the project to be given. In many cases they are not even half-interested.
5. Cross cultural/geography teams are more common than you thought, hence the way of working and communication needs to be tailored to the situation.
6. Most of your time may get spent in non-value adding activities including redundant reports and emails that you can’t avoid.
7. You may be expected to control many stakeholders over whom you do not have any direct or indirect control. You must be ready to devise your own system/structure to get the task accomplished by them.
8. Daily and weekly meetings are essential but not everyone comes prepared and thus a lot of time is wasted.
9. Audits are essential but they may not provide you with any meaningful recommendations. Most of the time they end up either as a checklist verification or fault-finding/blame game further enhancing your troubles.
10. You will be the first scape-goat when things go wrong. Being leader of the team, you may be held accountable to things for which you are neither responsible nor have control/authority!