Bren Avalon

Bren Avalon is in Doddanekkundi, in the east of Bengaluru, a locality that filled in around the office parks over the last two decades. The developer has not published a street address, a pincode or any distance to a workplace, a school or a metro station, so this page quotes none. Ask the seller for the exact address and put a pin on it before you do anything else.

What a settled locality gives you is the chance to test a commute rather than imagine it. Drive from the building to your office at your usual hour on a weekday, and back at the evening peak. If your children are at school, add that trip at the real start time. Ask residents who have lived here since 2015 how the roads have changed, because they have watched the neighbourhood grow up around the building.

Walk the streets around the gate on foot as well. Count the grocery shops, the pharmacies and the bus stops within a few minutes, and look at how the approach road handles rain. A building that opened in 2015 has neighbours on every side by now, so check what those neighbours are, and whether anything large is being built next door that will change the light or the traffic.

Bren Avalon was sold as 2 BHK and 3 BHK flats, and across the two the sizes run from about 1,023 sq ft to about 1,419 sq ft. The developer has not published which figure belongs to which plan, nor carpet areas. For the flat you are offered, ask for the original sale deed, which states the area, and the sanctioned plan, which shows whether the layout has been altered since 2015.

No developer price exists, because nothing is left to sell. The price is what you agree with the owner, anchored to recent registered sale values of similar flats in the same building, adjusted for floor, facing and condition. In a nine-floor block the top and bottom floors trade differently from the middle, so compare like with like.

Inspect the flat as a ten-year-old home. Look at the plumbing under the sinks, the wiring, seepage marks on ceilings and outside walls, and the windows. Rewiring or replumbing belongs in your offer.

A completed flat with its occupancy certificate carries no GST. Stamp duty and registration are due on the full agreed value. Before you make an offer, get in writing:

• The flat's built-up and carpet area from the original deed
• Any alteration made since handover and whether it was sanctioned
• Maintenance dues outstanding and the association's transfer fee
• The reserve fund position and any special levy planned for repairs
• Stamp duty and registration on the full consideration

Bren Avalon has no RERA number, and it should not have one. Construction ended in December 2014, and Karnataka's RERA rules, which require registration of projects under construction, arrived in 2017. Searching rera.karnataka.gov.in will therefore tell you nothing useful; the protection here comes from the completion papers and the seller's title.

Ask the seller for:

• The occupancy certificate for the block your flat is in
• The sanctioned building plan showing the flat
• The seller's registered sale deed and the earlier deeds in the chain back to the developer
• An encumbrance certificate covering the years since the seller bought
• The khata in the seller's name and the latest property tax receipt
• A no-dues letter from the owners' association
• The society's share certificate or membership record, if one is issued

Have a lawyer confirm that every name matches the person signing the sale deed and that the flat as built matches the sanctioned plan. If the seller has a home loan, the bank holds the original deed; agree in writing how the loan is closed and the deed released on the day of registration. Afterwards, apply for the khata transfer and a fresh tax assessment in your name, and lodge the association's transfer acknowledgement with your papers.

Bren Avalon puts 386 flats into nine floors on a plot of 4.7 acres, or 5 acres, depending on which of the developer's figures you take, with a claimed 60 percent of the ground left open. Whether that is one long block or several is not published. None of this needs a render; the community is more than a decade old, so walk it and see how the towers, the parking and the open ground actually divide the plot.

The developer has not published an amenity list for this project, so no picture of a morning swim or an evening game can honestly be drawn here. What the community has, it has had for ten years; ask the owners' association for the list of facilities in use, which are maintained and which have fallen out of service. Look at the gardens, the lifts, the water tanks and the sewage treatment plant, because on a 2014 building these are the things that cost money next.

A resident of ten years will tell you how the building lives: how quickly the lifts come at 8.30, whether the parking is enough, how the association handles disputes and repairs. Ask for the monthly maintenance charge, the reserve fund balance and the minutes of the last general body meeting. In a completed community those documents are the real master plan.