Key documents required to sell your home

K Ramanathan

Selling home is not as easy task as perceived by many. It also involves astute planning as buying a home. Sellers are of two types, those who want to sell the property to meet urgent domestic need and those who sell home as part of their portfolio requirement. The second ones are basically real estate investors, who wait for capital appreciation to book profit at an appropriate market condition.

Those who want to sell their home for urgent need, can’t see the market condition – whether low or high, but have to sell for a maximum possible price. He has to either depend on its own strategy to reach buyers or engage real estate agents to sell the property. Before going for hunting a buyer, the seller must ensure that he has all documents ready. There are a set of papers one should have before putting up the sale board. 

Parent documents

Parent documents are the sale deeds, which traces the earlier owners of the property on sale. The owner should have got these documents before registering his or her property from the previous owner. The documents should trace owners of the property of few generations and divulge about any property dispute exist at that points in time. The current owner should take a copy of this document to be given along with other necessary papers to the interested parties.

Sale deed 

This the current sale document of the property on sale. The owner should take a copy of this document and keep it ready so that he can give this document to the prospective buyers for legal scrutiny. 

Patta

Patta is a legal document given by local land authority authenticating the ownership of the land occupied by the present owner. There can be ‘group patta’ which can be obtained for a huge piece of land and latter divided into smaller sizes and sold to different people. In that case each owner of the fragmented land pieces should have group patta and individual patta obtained from the land registration authority of the respective area. In the case of apartment, the patta should be for the entire land on which the building stands. The owner should keep a copy of this also.

Encumbrance certificate (EC)

This document is mandatory as it tells about the liabilities such as loan against the property or unpaid loan, if any, between previous owners or ancestral property disputes. Normally, to prove the clarity of the document, the seller should apply for an EC with the local registration authority for a minimum of 30 years. Earlier one has to go the local taluka office and apply for EC personally. Due to technological innovation, one can apply for EC by sitting from office or home in the designated websites of the respective regional registration authorities. The EC will be sent to the applier within a month a minimum amount will be charged, which also can be paid online.

Loan clearance certificate

If the seller has pledged the property with a financial institution, he has to provide loan clearance certificate. This can be exempted if the buyer is ready to pick up the hypothecated property by transferring the loan to his name after paying the difference of amount from the agreed value of the property to the seller.

Apart from the all the above documents, one has to provide residential and ID proof at the time of registration of the property. Residential proofs can be ration card, adhaar card, voter ID etc while for ID proof the sellers can provide PAN card along with two passport sized photographs. Both buyer and seller have to provide above address and ID proof at the time of registration of the property. 

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