The site-visit checklist

A brochure and a filing tell you what a project is meant to be. A site visit tells you what it actually is: the walk from the gate, the sound at seven in the evening, the flat next to the lift rather than the one in the render. Most of what decides whether you will be happy there for the next twenty years cannot be read off a document, and most buyers spend less time on the visit than they do comparing floor plans online.

This guide is built to be printed and carried. It covers what to ask for before you go, what to actually look at once you are there, the two rules — road width and noise — that are easy to check and easy to ignore, and the questions worth putting to the sales team directly, with what a straight answer to each sounds like.

Before you go

Ask the sales team to have three things ready, and look at them before you arrive if you can.

• The sanctioned building plan, or at least the sheet for your block and floor. Our documents guide covers what it should show and where else to find it.
• The project’s RERA page, pulled up on your own phone rather than theirs. Our guide to reading a K-RERA filing sets out what to check on it, in order.
• The current cost sheet, every charge listed, not a single all-inclusive figure. See our guide to the full cost for what should be on it.

Bring a tape measure or a laser measure, and your phone: for photos, for a torch in unlit stairwells and basements, and to check signal strength once you are there.

Sample flat versus real flat

A sample flat is built to sell. It is usually dressed with furniture a size or two smaller than real furniture, which makes ordinary rooms read as larger than they are, and a false ceiling is common in a sample flat even where the standard specification has none, which changes both the apparent height of the room and what it hides above: services, beams and ducting that will be visible, or lower, in your actual flat. The sample is also often a different unit type from the one you are buying — a larger configuration, a corner unit, or a higher floor with a better view — shown because it sells better, not because it is what is on offer at your price.

The sample flat is not just marketing: RERA makes the promoter answerable for it. If you pay money relying on a model apartment that turns out to misrepresent what you are sold, and you lose out because of that, the promoter must compensate you; if you would rather walk away, you are entitled to your full investment back with interest. That only bites once you have paid something and can show the mismatch, so the better time to catch it is before you pay: measure, and compare against the filing.

Carpet area is also where a small, lawful gap can turn into real money. The Karnataka model agreement lets the final measured carpet area differ from what you were sold by up to 3%, confirmed only once the building is complete and has its occupancy certificate. If it comes in smaller, the promoter must refund the difference with interest. If it comes in larger, by no more than that 3%, the promoter can bill you for the extra at your original rate. On a 1,000 sq ft flat bought at ₹9,500 a square foot — ₹95 lakh — the full 3% is 30 sq ft, or ₹2.85 lakh (30 × ₹9,500) you could still owe after the flat is built, on top of the price you agreed. Ask what the carpet area is measured against now, and keep the figure on your agreement so you have something to check the final number against later.

Reading construction quality

You do not need to be an engineer to judge most of what is visible on a site visit. You do need to look, rather than take the finish for granted.

• Doors and windows. Open and close every one you can reach. They should sit square in the frame and latch without being forced or lifted.
• Floors. Roll a small ball or a marble across the room; it should not roll on its own toward a corner. Tap a few tiles: a hollow sound can mean poor bonding underneath.
• Ceilings and walls, especially in bathrooms and kitchens. Look for staining or dampness, particularly on the ceiling of the flat below a bathroom, which is the most common place a leak shows up first.
• Paint that looks patched. A rectangle of fresher paint, or a line where two shades meet, often means a crack or a repair was covered rather than fixed. Ask what was repaired underneath it.
• The common areas. Lift lobbies, staircases and the compound wall are finished to the same standard as your flat, or they are not; they are also usually easier to inspect honestly, since they are not staged the way a sample flat is.

The road, and what’s next door

Drive or ride the actual approach road, not just the last hundred metres from the highway that the brochure photographs. Check its surface, whether it floods in the rain, whether it is wide enough for two cars to pass an autorickshaw, and who maintains it: a road that is still privately held by the developer, rather than handed over to the local authority, can stay unfinished for years after the flats are sold.

Road width and building height

The width of the road a plot faces is not a side detail: in Bengaluru’s zonal regulations it sets the most the building can build up to, in floor area, and on a narrow road it caps the height outright.

Below the table’s own thresholds sits a harder rule: if the road fronting the plot is narrower than 9 metres, the building’s height is capped outright, whatever FAR the plot would otherwise be allowed. That cap was raised from 11.5 metres to 12 metres by a state notification made final on 1 Aug 2025, so a building sanctioned before that date on a narrow road may sit lower than one sanctioned after it. Either way, a genuinely narrow approach road is not only an inconvenience: it is a legal ceiling on how large a neighbouring plot can ever be built up, which cuts both ways for you as a buyer.

Lakes, drains and what’s next door

Bengaluru keeps no-build buffers around its lakes and storm drains, which our documents guide sets out in full. On a site visit, walk the boundary of the plot rather than relying on the brochure’s site plan: look for a drain or a low-lying stretch that could be a seasonal lake bed, and check a satellite map of the area before you go, so you know what you are looking for. Ask, too, what is permitted on the vacant plot next door and behind the project, since its zoning classification, not the current view from your balcony, decides what can eventually be built there. The sales team may not know; the corporation’s planning office or a copy of the zonal map will.

Timing: peak hour and at night

A site visit at eleven on a Tuesday morning shows you the project at its quietest and its approach road at its emptiest. Go back, or go once, at a time closer to how you will actually live there.

• Drive the commute at peak hour, in both directions, on the route you would actually take to work. A ten-minute site-visit drive can become forty-five once you add the traffic you were not shown.
• Visit again after dark. Check the street lighting on the approach road, whether the site itself is lit and staffed, and how the area feels to walk through, not just drive through.

Noise, by zone

Noise is one of the few things on this list with a legal limit attached to it, set by the Central Pollution Control Board under the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000. The limits are set as an average sound level over time, not a single peak, and they differ by the kind of area and by day and night.

You cannot measure this properly with a phone app — the microphones are not calibrated — but you can use one as a rough guide, and the comparison across zones matters more than the exact number. Stand at the site, ideally at your own floor level, at a quiet part of the day and again near 10pm, and note what you actually hear: a busy arterial road, a rail line, an industrial unit nearby, or a temple or venue that amplifies sound in the evenings. If the site sits close to a road or a mixed-use stretch, its ambient noise may sit nearer the commercial limit than the residential one, whatever the flats themselves are zoned as.

Utilities: signal, power, water

Three quick, practical checks, each best done from the actual floor and unit you are buying rather than the ground-floor sales office.

• Mobile signal. Walk to the approximate location of your unit and check signal strength on your own carrier, not just the office Wi-Fi. A tower a kilometre away can still leave an upper floor with a weak signal behind a lift shaft or a neighbouring block.
• Power. Ask what backup capacity is provided for the flats specifically, as distinct from the common areas, and how it is billed. Under Bengaluru’s building rules, a permanent BESCOM connection cannot be given before the building has its occupancy certificate, so power at an under-construction site is temporary construction supply, not a preview of what you will actually get.
• Water. Ask plainly where the water comes from: a BWSSB connection, a borewell, a tanker top-up, or a mix, and what happens in summer. The same occupancy-certificate rule applies to a permanent BWSSB connection, so ask specifically whether the answer you are given describes the permanent arrangement or today’s construction-stage one.

Talking to people

Neighbours and security guards

If the project is close to existing buildings, a few minutes with whoever is around is worth more than another hour in the sales office. Ask neighbours how construction traffic and dust have been, whether water and power in the area are reliable, and whether anything about the site has surprised them. Security guards, at this project or a nearby one, often know the practical detail no brochure carries: which gate actually gets used, how deliveries and move-ins are handled, and how the place feels at odd hours.

Questions for the sales team

Ask these directly, and notice whether the answer is specific or general.

The printable checklist

One list, in the order you will actually use it. Print this page, or just this section, and take it with you.

Before you leave home

• Ask for the sanctioned plan, the RERA page and the full cost sheet in advance.
• Note the carpet area and unit type on your draft agreement, to check against the sample flat.
• Plan two visits: one at peak commuting hour, one after dark.

On site

• Measure the sample flat’s rooms and compare them with the carpet area on the filing.
• Check doors, windows, floors and ceilings for fit, level and damp staining.
• Walk the approach road and the site boundary, not just the show route.
• Check mobile signal at your own floor, and ask about power and water directly.
• Talk to a neighbour or a security guard, not only the sales team.

Before you sign anything

• Get the escrow bank, the RERA number and the progress figure in writing, not just spoken.
• Ask for the occupancy certificate itself if the project is sold as ready.
• Get a structural engineer’s view on any crack you were not able to judge yourself.