6 min read · By the CHS Expert team
The developer-to-society handover is a one-time event with long-term consequences. Whatever is not collected, verified and recorded at handover becomes progressively harder to recover. Committees that treat handover as a formality often discover missing corpus amounts, absent warranties and incomplete statutory papers years later — when the developer is unreachable and memories have faded.
At minimum, insist on: building approval plans and completion/occupation certificates; society registration papers and adopted bye-laws; all agreements relating to common areas and amenities; property tax and utility records; insurance policies; staff and vendor contracts; and complete financial statements for the pre-handover period. Ask for originals wherever possible and record what is provided as copies.
Verify the corpus fund and maintenance balances against the amounts collected from purchasers — the figures in sale agreements are your reference point. Reconcile bank balances, review pre-handover expenses charged against member funds, and obtain a closing statement signed by the developer. Any shortfall should be documented in writing before handover is accepted.
Walk the premises with a checklist: lifts, pumps, generators, fire systems, gym equipment, CCTV and access systems. For each asset record make, condition, AMC status and warranty documents. Lifts and fire systems in particular carry statutory maintenance duties that fall on the society from day one.
The most frequent mistakes: accepting handover minutes without an annexed checklist, letting individual committee members hold documents personally, ignoring conveyance of land as a separate pending step, and not opening society bank accounts before funds transfer. A structured handover with professional support avoids all four.
CHS Expert manages this end to end for societies across Thane and Mumbai.
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