The method
How we check a parcel
Four questions, each answered once. Every operator in this market says its land is clean and publishes nothing. Here is what we actually look at, which document we pull it from, and what makes us walk away.
We work where we buy the land ourselves.
We tell you whether you may legally buy, before you get in the car.
We trace who owned the land, back through the register, and check every link in the chain.
We describe land by what it does through the year, not on the day we visited.
We state the zone, the setback in metres, and what may lawfully be built inside them.
We list only what passed every check, and we say what we could not verify.
Standing
May you buy this?Buyer × law
The first question, and the one no competitor asks. On the Maharashtra Konkan coast, half the parcels are not legal for half the buyers, and the market discovers it at the sale deed.
What we pull
- Your agriculturist certificate and your own 7/12, if you hold land anywhere
- The parcel's tenure column on the 7/12
- Any NA order behind it (older conversions) or, from 2026, the development permission and premium receipt, with numbers and dates
- The DP or RP sheet, where one covers the land
What disqualifies
- Section 63, MTALA 1948 bars a sale to a non-agriculturist without the Collector's permission — and the permission must be prior, not applied for afterwards.
- FEMA. An NRI or OCI may not acquire agricultural land, plantation property or a farmhouse in India at all. There is no permission route. Only inheritance.
- Ceiling limits on total holding, which are counted across everything you own.
What changed in 2025–26
NA permission. Since 31 December 2025 (Mah. Act LVII of 2025), the Collector’s NA permission is no longer needed where a Development or Regional Plan allows the use. The planning authority grants development permission on a one-time premium, and the 7/12 is then changed. The annual NA tax and the separate sanad are gone; an old sanad is evidence of a past conversion. Class II land stays Class II. Tenancy. Mah. Act XVIII of 2026, as reported and read from the bill, removes the 40-times nazrana on land a tenant bought under Section 43 and has held for ten years; the buyer must still be an agriculturist. Section 63 itself is unchanged. Checked 1 October 2026; your advocate confirms.
Two further questions are unsettled and we do not state them as fact: whether an agriculturist from another state qualifies here, and the income ceiling asserted in s.63(1)(b). Position checked 9 September 2026.
Ownership
May they sell it?Seller × private law
Not whether the seller says the title is clean. Whether the register says so, back through every hand the land has passed through.
What we pull
- The 7/12 extract and the ferfar chain — every mutation, in order
- Form 8-A and the holding record
- The root of title, and the deeds between it and today
- An encumbrance search
What disqualifies
- A severed root of title — the chain does not reach back to a document that can start it.
- Heirs untraced in the ferfar chain, or a partition with no release deed on record.
- An undivided share with no sub-division effected.
- A tenancy or deemed-purchaser entry nobody mentioned.
- A right of way that exists in practice but not on the record. This is the most common way a Konkan deal dies.
Ground
What is it?The land × physical reality
Land described by what it does across a year, not by what it looked like on the morning someone photographed it. This section cannot be written from documents, and if nobody has walked the parcel it stays empty and says so.
What we record, on the parcel
- Water by month — which months the stream runs, well depth, the table, the monsoon high-water line
- Aspect and December light — where the sun lands in the short month
- Elevation, slope, laterite depth, soil
- Canopy species and age; what grows without irrigation
- The road — width, surface, and what the monsoon does to it
- Surveyed boundary against the recorded area, and any discrepancy
- Annual holding cost — gram panchayat tax, watchman, plantation upkeep, fencing
What we will not do
- Describe water, canopy or road condition from satellite imagery.
- Photograph the land in one season and present it as the land.
- Fill an empty Ground section rather than publish it empty. An empty section is a finding, not an omission.
Permission
What may you do with it?The land × public regulation
Owning coastal land and being allowed to build on it are different questions. Most beach-touch land in this district is unbuildable at the waterline, and the market sells the phrase without the position.
What we pull
- The zone certificate
- The approved CZMP sheet — the southern Konkan district's plan was approved on 25 August 2023, sheets MH-1 to MH-21. We cite the sheet number.
- The NA order or, from 2026, the development permission and premium; where there is neither, the route the plan allows
- The DP or RP earmark
What disqualifies
- CRZ III-A carries a 50 m no-development zone; III-B carries 200 m, measured from the High Tide Line. A parcel whose usable ground disappears inside that setback is not a parcel, whatever the view is.
- A stated room count the agri-tourism GR does not support. Up to 2 acres allows 4 rooms; 2–5 allows 6; 5 and over allows 8 rooms plus 2 dormitories.
The carve-out worth more than a sea view
Under Mah. Act 1 of 2016 the Section 63 bar lifts where a draft or final Development or Regional Plan earmarks the land residential, commercial or industrial. No Collector permission application arises. The conditions: non-agricultural use within five years, a further five on a 2% per annum non-utilisation charge, and a 25% transfer charge on resale. We screen every parcel against the plan sheets before anything else.
The agri-tourism GR (TDS-2019/8/C.N.514/ENVI, 28 September 2020) is silent on NA conversion. We say “no Town Planning permission up to eight rooms”; we never say “no NA needed”. Position checked 9 September 2026.
A Goa read
Different papers, same four questionsGoa runs on Goa law. Standing is simpler there: Vassoka lists old settlement land, and orchard land for a farmhouse, never paddy land, so Goa’s 2023 farmland rule does not reach our parcels. FEMA is the exception: an NRI or OCI may buy our settlement parcels, on the record that shows the land is non-agricultural, but not orchard land or a farmhouse. Ownership is the hard part. Form I & XIV and the deed chain are only the top of it; underneath sit the Portuguese-era records, and most Goa title failures live there.
- The description (descrição) and the inscription (inscrição) in the old Land Registration Office: the property’s own entry, and who was registered as owning it
- The matriz and cadastral survey: the revenue-side record of holder and extent, tied to today’s survey number
- The auto de marcação and the surveyor’s register (registo do agrimensor): the boundary stones as set, and the measured plan
- The inventory proceedings and succession deeds for every death in the chain
- The Portuguese Civil Code as it stands in Goa: communion of assets between spouses, and the rules of succession, so that each holder’s share is computed, not assumed
- Every heir counted, wherever they live, so that no future claimant is left off the deed
- Comunidade and tenancy claims read parcel by parcel. A mundkar on the land is a hard flag: since 25 February 2026 the dwelling can pass to anyone else only with the mundkar signing the registered deed as a confirming party (Goa Act 4 of 2026)
- Permission: whether a conversion sanad exists (the Collector must now decide an application within 45 days), the zone under the Regional Plan 2021, and CRZ where coastal, read on the approved 2011 coastal map until Goa’s 2019 plan is approved
Zones in Goa move. We read the date.
The Regional Plan 2021 governs. As reported by the parties and the press, the High Court quashed the outline development plans for Calangute, Candolim, Arpora, Nagoa and Parra on 23 June 2025, and the Supreme Court ordered status quo on 21 July 2025. Change-of-zone approvals under Section 39A are subject to a pending High Court case, and those in St Andre and Sanquelim are on hold. A zone that was changed recently is a zone that can be changed back. The Western Ghats eco-sensitive draft of 27 July 2026 reaches Sattari and one Ponda village, not Pernem, Bardez, Tiswadi or Bicholim.
Position checked 1 Oct 2026. Your advocate confirms against the parcel.
Access
A deliberate exceptionAccess is the most common practical deal-killer on Konkan land, and it does not sit in one check. Whether the right of way is recorded is an Ownership question. Width, surface and whether the road holds through July are Ground questions.
Access
Recorded: is the right of way on the 7/12, or is it a panand nobody wrote down?
On the ground: metalled or cart track, its width in metres, and its condition in the monsoon.
Rather than let the structure bury it, every Land Dossier carries an Access callout on its cover, pulling from both checks. Structure and presentation are allowed to differ. This is the one place we let them.
The verdicts
Four, and one of them is not a failureEach check carries its own verdict, and they routinely disagree with each other. A dossier where every line reads Clear is not a good dossier. It is one nobody did.
“Not established” is never a soft “Clear”. It means we looked and could not answer the question, and it appears on the page in the same weight as the others. A parcel is listed under Vassoka Parcels only when Ownership and Permission are Clear and all four checks are done.