00:00One missing document can cost you millions and months and years of time wastage even after you
00:08have found the buyer for your sale of the Indian property. Many NRI families believe the hard part
00:17is finding a buyer. In reality, the sale can still collapse at the final stage. Let's take an example
00:25recent sale which was a family who was selling a flat in Mumbai. The buyer was ready. The price
00:32was agreed. The family believed that they had the paperwork and it was complete because they had
00:38the scans, the photos, the copies all saved in an email. Then the buyer's bank asked for the registered
00:46original sale deed, not a scan. Now there was another issue as well. In that transaction,
00:52the father had left a will but the required legal process had never been completed. A photograph of
00:59the signed will could not be used in place of court approval. The bank gave hurtie days. That was not
01:06enough time to trace the original documents and complete the pending legal steps. The buyer walked
01:12away. Eight months later, the family sold the flat to another buyer at a lower price. Now this is where
01:21many NRI families suffer. They assume that if a document exists somewhere, the property is safe.
01:27But a scanned sale deed is not the registered original. And documents saved in an email cannot
01:34help if the originals are missing when a bank or a buyer or a registrar asks for them. Now that
01:41is why
01:41every property should undergo a document audit before it is put up for sale. A document audit checks three
01:49things. First, which are the originals that are available? Second, which are the documents that
01:54exist but need to be still located? And third, which papers are incomplete, outdated, or legally
02:02unusable? If originals are missing, they must be recovered from the correct subregistrar, bank, municipal
02:10office, or a government department. And if replacements are needed, they must be properly certified
02:15with the required seals and authentication. Now this work cannot be done properly from a laptop alone.
02:23It requires people on the ground who knows which office to approach, which record year to check,
02:29and what each authority will accept. And once verified, certified copies should be kept ready
02:35for routine use while the originals remain safely stored. In our experience, property sales rarely fail
02:43because of the buyer or the price. They fail because one legal requirement was not checked in time.
02:49The families who avoid this problem are the ones who verify their documents before the sale begins
02:56and not during the 30 days that a bank gives them. To avoid this, NRI families should take these three
03:03steps. First, verify all your original property documents before planning a sale. Second, complete any pending
03:10legal process before the buyer or bank asks for it. Third, keep certified copies ready while storing
03:16the originals safely. A sale should not depend on a last-minute search for old papers. Check your
03:23documents early or the delay may cost you the deal. Your documents are not safe because they exist.
03:30They are safe only when someone has confirmed that they are complete, traceable, and legally ready.
03:37If you have any questions related to this topic, leave your comments and I will personally try to reply
03:43and help as many of you as I can.
