Glossary

The words land deals turn on.

Most people looking at land have never read a 7/12 or heard of a sanad. Every technical word on this site links here, and shows this definition when you hover over it. If a word you met is missing, tell us and we will add it.

Records and title

7/12 extract: The Maharashtra record of rights for a parcel: who holds it, its area, its class and what grows on it. A record, not proof of ownership. Every check starts here.
Ferfar: The mutation register behind the 7/12: every change of holder and why. Where a chain of owners either adds up to people who can sign, or does not.
Form 8-A: The holder's account in a Maharashtra village: every parcel one person holds there. Shows what else sits with the seller.
Form I & XIV: Goa's record of rights for a survey number: occupants, tenants, area and cultivation. Presumptive, not proof; the deed chain and the Portuguese-era records sit behind it.
Title: Who has owned the land, back through every transfer, to a document that can start the chain. A title 'ties' when every link is on record and every holder could sign.
Record of Rights: The government register of who holds a parcel and on what terms. The 7/12 in Maharashtra, Form I & XIV in Goa. Kept clean means no unexplained entry appears on it.
Mutation: The revenue office entering a change of holder in the record after a sale, inheritance or partition. Small in money, large in time, and the step most buyers forget to chase.
Encumbrance: A charge on the land: a mortgage, a lien, a pending case, a lease. An encumbrance search reads the registrar's index for any of these against the parcel.
Survey number: The number the revenue survey gave a parcel. It is the parcel's identity in every record. Never published by Vassoka until a buyer has signed a viewing undertaking.
Sub-Registrar: The government office where a sale deed is registered and becomes a public record. Registration is not the same as mutation.
Stamp duty: The state tax paid on a sale deed, as a share of the higher of the price and the ready reckoner value.

Goa, and the Portuguese era

Inscription (Inscrição): In Goa's Portuguese-era Land Registration Office, the entry recording who owns a described property and by what act. The ownership half of the old register.
Description (Descrição): The property's own entry in the Portuguese-era Land Registration Office: its number, boundaries and extent. The property half of the old register; the inscription hangs off it.
Matriz / cadastral: The Portuguese-era revenue survey of Goa: each property's matriz number in the taluka register, with holder and extent. Read against today's survey number.
Auto de Marcação: The Portuguese-era demarcation record: the boundary stones as set and witnessed. Read to check that the land on the ground is the land in the deed.
Registo do Agrimensor: The government surveyor's register from Portuguese Goa: the measured plan of a property. Where an old extent can be tied to a modern survey.
Communion of assets: Under the Portuguese Civil Code as it applies in Goa, spouses hold property in common by default. On a death, the estate passes through an inventory to every heir, wherever they live. A Goa title read counts all of them.
Inventory proceeding: The Goa court process that lists a deceased person's estate and allots shares to the heirs. A sale without it, or missing an heir, leaves a future claimant.
Comunidade: A Goan village community that holds land collectively under its own code. Comunidade land is sold by a different route, and a private deed on it is a warning sign.
Mundkar: Under Goa's Mundkar Act 1975, a person who lives in a dwelling on someone else's land with a protected right to stay. A Mundkar claim survives a sale.
Tenancy (Goa): A cultivator's protected right over farmland. In Goa under the 1964 Act, in Maharashtra under the 1948 Act, a tenant can become the owner. Which is why the record must be read for tenants.
Conversion sanad: In Goa, the Collector's order under s.32 of the Land Revenue Code converting land from agricultural to another use. Zoning says what could be built; the sanad says the land is allowed to be used that way.
Regional Plan: Goa's statutory land-use map. Each parcel falls in a zone (settlement, orchard, agricultural, and others) that sets what may be built.
Settlement zone: The Regional Plan zone where houses are allowed. 'Old settlement' is land zoned settlement in the Regional Plan for Goa 2021 as notified; 'new settlement' is land re-zoned since, which the market treats with more caution. Vassoka lists old settlement only.

Who may buy

Section 63: The Maharashtra rule (Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act 1948) that a non-agriculturist may not buy agricultural land without the Collector's prior permission. Goa has its own rule since 2023: land used for paddy can be sold only to an agriculturist.
Agriculturist: In Maharashtra, a person who already holds agricultural land in the state. An agriculturist may buy farmland; others need permission or must buy converted land.
Collector permission: The district Collector's written permission, obtained before the sale, that lets a non-agriculturist buy farmland in Maharashtra. Six to twelve months, in our experience.
Development Plan earmark: Land marked residential or commercial in a Maharashtra Development or Regional Plan. A 2016 amendment lifts the Section 63 bar for it, with conditions.
NA: Non-agricultural: land whose use has been converted from farming, by order, with a number and a date. Most coastal land in Maharashtra is still agricultural on the record.
FEMA: The Foreign Exchange Management Act. Under it an NRI or OCI may not buy agricultural land, plantation land or a farmhouse anywhere in India. No permission changes this.
NRI / OCI: Non-Resident Indian; Overseas Citizen of India. Both may buy converted or residential land; neither may buy agricultural land.
Deemed tenant: A person who cultivates another's land and, by law, is treated as a tenant even without a written lease. The reason farming on your land needs a registered lease.
Registered lease: A farm lease registered under Maharashtra's Agricultural Land Leasing Act 2017, under which no protected tenancy arises. Cancellable on the notice written into it.

The ground and the coast

Zoning: What the planning map says the land may be used for: settlement, agricultural, orchard, no-development. Decides whether a house is possible before a single paper is read.
CRZ: Coastal Regulation Zone: the rules for building near the sea. Each stretch of coast has a category; the category sets how far from the high tide line nothing may be built.
No Development Zone: The strip from the high tide line where nothing may be built: 50 metres in CRZ III-A, 200 metres in CRZ III-B. Most 'beach touch' land is inside it.
High Tide Line: The line the sea reaches at the highest tide, as drawn on the approved coastal map. Every CRZ distance is measured from it.
CZMP: The approved Coastal Zone Management Plan: the map sheet that fixes the CRZ category and the high tide line for a stretch of coast. We cite the sheet number.
Right of way: The legal right to reach the parcel across someone else's land. It must be on the record, not only on the ground; an unrecorded path is the most common way a Konkan deal dies.
Potkharaba: The unusable part of a parcel on the 7/12: rock, nala, road. Separated from the cultivable area because it changes the real rate.
Guntha: A Konkan unit of land: 40 gunthas make an acre; one guntha is 101.17 square metres, 1,089 sq ft, or 121 sq yd (gaj).
Acre: 4,047 square metres, or 40 gunthas. Whole parcels on the Konkan coast are usually described in acres and gunthas.
Agri-tourism GR: The Maharashtra government resolution allowing a small number of guest rooms on farmland without Town Planning permission. Silent on NA conversion.
Canopy undertaking: The written promise every Vassoka buyer signs: no clear-felling, and the older trees on the parcel stay.
Konkan: The coastal strip of western India between the Sahyadri hills and the Arabian Sea. Vassoka works on its Maharashtra stretch and in North Goa.

Vassoka words

Land Dossier: Vassoka's file on one parcel: the four checks, the documents read, the verdict on each, and what could not be established. The buyer's advocate reads it before any token.
Vassoka Clear: A paid read of any parcel, wherever you found it, delivered as a Land Dossier. Credited against a Vassoka purchase.
Ticket band: The range a whole parcel sits in, rather than an exact price. Exact prices reach a buyer after a call, never a listing.
Whole parcel: One survey number, bought entire, with its own record. Vassoka does not sell demarcated plots cut from a parcel.
Arrived vs coming: Arrived: a road you can drive, water on the land, power at the pole, a signed agreement. Coming: announced, sanctioned, funded or rumoured. We never price in what is only coming.
Ready reckoner rate: The government's published minimum value of land in a village, used to compute stamp duty. A floor for tax, not a market price.
RERA agent: A real-estate agent registered with the state regulator. Vassoka is an agent, not a promoter; registration in both states is in progress and dated on /about.

Definitions are plain-language summaries as read on 25 Sep 2026, not legal advice. Your advocate confirms every position against the specific parcel.