The number in the listing is not the number you write cheques for. None of what follows is hidden, exactly, but it is rarely totalled up in one place before a buyer has already decided, which is the wrong order to do it in. The costs beyond the price are real, they arrive at specific moments, and some of them are negotiable in ways that a buyer who only learns about them at the signing table has already lost the chance to negotiate. Understanding the full outflow before you commit, rather than discovering it in pieces afterwards, is one of the simplest ways to avoid an unpleasant surprise on a large purchase.
Stamp duty and registration
Stamp duty is a state tax on the instrument of transfer, paid to the Maharashtra government, and it is calculated on the higher of your agreement value or the ready reckoner value for that location. The ready reckoner is the government's own schedule of assumed values, and because the duty is charged on whichever is higher, a low agreement value does not necessarily reduce the duty if the reckoner value for the area is higher. Rates vary by location, are revised in state budgets, and some districts carry additional cesses, so the sensible move is to get the current figure for the specific village rather than relying on a number someone quoted you for a Mumbai flat years ago. Registration is a separate and much smaller fee paid to the sub-registrar for recording the transaction. Two things about both charges are worth knowing in advance. They are payable at registration rather than spread across a construction period, so they arrive as a lump sum at a specific moment rather than being financed over time. And in Maharashtra a lower stamp-duty rate has at times applied where the buyer is a woman, which is worth checking against the current rules before deciding whose name the property will go into, because the saving can be meaningful on a purchase of this size.
GST, and when it does not apply
Goods and services tax applies to the sale of an under-construction property, at the rate then in force and typically without input tax credit, which makes it a real cost rather than one that washes out. It does not apply to a completed property sold after the occupancy certificate has been received, because that sale is treated as a transfer of immovable property rather than a supply of construction services. The distinction is worth understanding precisely because it means a ready house and an under- construction house at the same headline price are not the same price once GST is counted. Ask for the total outflow, not the price. Any seller who cannot produce it in one line has not thought about your side of the transaction. The practical consequence is that when you compare an under-construction purchase against a completed one, you must add the applicable GST to the under-construction figure to compare like with like. A buyer who compares the two on headline price alone is comparing a pre-tax number with a post-tax one, and the gap can be substantial. This is not a reason to avoid under-construction purchases, which have their own advantages, but it is a reason to do the comparison correctly rather than on the sticker prices alone.
Your own legal fees
A title search and search report going back the standard thirty years, plus a review of the draft agreements by your own lawyer, is the one cost buyers most often try to save on and the only one that can prevent an outright catastrophe. It is a small fraction of one per cent of the purchase price, and it is not optional in any meaningful sense, because it is the single line of the whole transaction that stands between you and a defective title, an unregistered prior agreement or a family dispute that the public record has not caught up with. The instinct to economise here is understandable and wrong. The other costs are payments for things you are definitely getting; the legal fee is a payment for finding out whether you are getting anything at all. A buyer who spends crores on a house and declines to spend a fraction of one per cent confirming that the seller can actually convey it has misjudged the relative importance of the two, and it is the kind of economy that is invisible right up until the moment it is ruinous.
What should already be included
Three things are worth arguing about before you sign, because they are precisely where deals stall at the signing table when they were not settled earlier. Infrastructure charges: the road, the drainage, the water connection and the electrical service to the plot, which are substantial and which someone must pay for. Internal electrification and fittings, which turn a shell into a habitable house. And furnishing, where the argument is almost never about whether furnishing is included but about what exactly is on the inventory list, because a house furnished to a vague standard and one furnished to a specified inventory are different purchases at the same headline price. The way to handle all three is to get them settled in writing before you commit, not to discover at signing that the infrastructure charges are extra, the electrification is basic, and the furnishing is a photograph rather than a list. A buyer who raises these early is negotiating; a buyer who meets them at the signing table is accepting whatever the seller offers, because the momentum of a nearly complete deal makes it very hard to walk back over an inclusion. The inclusions are where a large part of the real value of the purchase sits, and they are most negotiable before the deal feels done.
A worked illustration
It helps to make the point concrete, in round terms and without pretending the figures are anyone's actual numbers. Take a headline price and add to it the stamp duty and registration on the higher of the agreement or reckoner value, payable as a lump at registration. Add GST if the purchase is under construction, at the rate then in force. Add your own legal fees for the title search and agreement review. And then account for whichever of the infrastructure charges, electrification and furnishing are not already included, because each of those can be a significant line if it falls to you. Sum those, and the total outflow can sit meaningfully above the listing price, which is exactly why the sensible question to a seller is not what the price is but what the total outflow is, itemised. A seller who can produce that itemised total in one line has thought about your side of the transaction and is comfortable with you seeing the whole of it. A seller who cannot, or who produces the headline and leaves the rest for you to discover, has told you something about how the rest of the dealings are likely to go.
Financing costs and the timing of money
If the purchase is financed, a further set of costs and timing questions comes into play, and they are easy to overlook when focusing on the price. A loan carries its own charges: processing fees, legal and technical valuation fees charged by the lender, and in some cases charges for the mortgage documentation. On an under- construction purchase the disbursement is staged against construction progress rather than paid out in full, and you typically pay interest on the drawn amount, sometimes as pre-EMI interest, from the first disbursement until possession, which is a real cost that overlaps with any rent or existing EMI you are already paying. The timing of money, not just its amount, is what catches buyers out. Stamp duty and registration arrive as a lump at registration rather than being financed over the loan, so they must be found in cash at a specific moment. The down payment, the gap between the price and what the bank will lend against its own valuation, must be found up front and can be larger than expected if the valuation comes in below the agreement value. Mapping when each sum falls due, rather than only how large each is, is the difference between a financed purchase that proceeds smoothly and one that stalls because the cash was not where it needed to be when it was needed.
The registration-day expenses
The day the transaction is registered carries its own cluster of costs and practicalities that are worth anticipating rather than meeting cold. The stamp duty and the registration fee are paid in connection with registration, and they are substantial, particularly the duty. There may be charges for the services of whoever prepares and lodges the documents, and if you are completing through a representative under a power of attorney, that instrument itself will have attracted stamp duty and registration when it was made. None of these is enormous individually, but together they form a lump that lands at completion rather than being spread over the purchase. Anticipating the registration-day outflow is part of budgeting the whole purchase honestly. A buyer who has planned for the price and the loan but not for the concentrated cost of the registration itself can find the final step more expensive than expected at exactly the moment the transaction completes. Listing these out in advance, alongside the acquisition costs and the recurring annual costs, is what turns the purchase from a headline number into a full financial picture, which is the only basis on which a decision of this size should actually be made.
The annual costs, once you own it
Beyond the one-time costs of acquiring the house there are the recurring costs of owning it, and these follow ownership rather than use, so they are payable whether the house is earning, empty or occupied only by you. Property tax. Building and contents insurance. Society or common-area charges where they apply. These are not large relative to the purchase, but they are perpetual, and a buyer budgeting only for the acquisition and not for the annual carry has planned for half the ownership. How these annual costs are handled is one of the clearer differences between the ways of owning a house. Under the Eko Estates Assured Agreement, the operational costs move to us for the term while property tax, insurance and society charges stay with you, so your recurring burden is the ownership costs alone and the operating costs are ours. Under Private Use, all of it is yours unless you take facility management as a separate service, which is the honest cost of an unrestricted calendar. Either way, the point is to know the annual number before you choose rather than to meet it in the second year.
Know the whole number before you commit
The single discipline that ties all of this together is to insist on the total outflow rather than the price, itemised and in writing, before you commit to anything. That total should include the stamp duty and registration, any GST, your legal fees, and whichever inclusions are not already covered, and it should be sitting next to a clear statement of the recurring annual costs. A purchase evaluated on that full picture is a purchase you understand; one evaluated on the headline price is one whose real cost you will assemble, uncomfortably, after you have already agreed to it. Every Eko Estates listing states its inclusions and exclusions as a mandatory field rather than a footnote, and the furnishing inventory is attached to the agreement item by item, so what is covered and what is extra is on the table from the start. The price covers the house furnished to the operating specification, the infrastructure charges, the internal electrification and the pool; stamp duty, registration and your own legal fees are at actuals. That is deliberately arranged so a buyer can see the whole number before deciding rather than assembling it afterwards, because the total outflow is the figure a purchase should actually be judged on, and a buyer who insists on seeing it in full is a buyer who will never be surprised by a cost that was there all along waiting to be added up.