How to Really Read a Real Estate Advertisement

The Cyclop Group, has one eye, out on your wallet! 

Admit it. It has happened to you. You read a real estate advert and took a day off, driving there to find your dream home, only to find a darn lemon. Well, you need not go through that rigmarole anymore friend. Indian Real Estate for Dummies now educates you about the sneaky adverts that you may see, from some of the real estate builders out there.

In this massive Public Service effort article, we tell you, what each of these standard gimmicks stand for!

1. Actual Site Picture: The builder has built a showcase villa or sample flat for you. This is to blow your mind away and make you book one. Mostly, in a 10 acre site or a 1000 apartment complex, building one villa or sample apartment is a cake walk. What you will actually get at the end of it all will resemble everything but what you saw at the site when you booked. Those are er, upgraded specs, the builder will promptly tell you.

Find out what you are going to get. Not what you see.

2. Piece of heaven/ far from the pollution and city madness/ island of peace: The trouble is, it is either too far away or the whole world is heading there to escape the city and pollution. By the time the project is handed over, it would become a little more crowded than the city itself!

3. 2 Car Garage: 2 cars can get into this garage for sure. Your's and the one that belongs to your 4 year old.

4. Private Sauna: The poor design, bad insulation and 12 hour summer time power cuts will turn your living room into one. Guaranteed....

5. Jacuzzi: This would come as standard with the most expensive villas in the projects. The wife will tell you about all the things she is going to do to you in the Jacuzzi when you move in to your new home. Trouble is that the lack of water and power will never enable you to run it. Darn!

6. Exclusive Residents' Club: As exclusive as a year round sale at the local supermarket. Pretty soon, you will find that the club is full of people you don't know or have never seen. And after a while, the club staff will ask you for an id every time you want to come in, simply because they don't recognise you. It is going to be that exclusive!

7. Just 30 Minutes from the Airport: Yes, but strictly between 3 AM and 4 AM, driving a 3 litre plus car on manual transmission mode!

8. Schools and Hospitals nearby: Correct, but those schools are not the kind that will get your kids into any college. The hospitals are good enough to give you first aid for a scratch or a tetanus injection. Anything more and the closest place is a 2 hours drive away.

9. No EMI till possession: A simple lure to make you sign the booking cheque. But rest assured because even the builder does not know when possession for you will really happen. God bless your home loan company.

10. 94% open space: This would include roads, parking spaces, electric transformers, drains, utility areas, garbage vats, generators, services and everything else. Were you thinking lush green parks and play areas? Well, that is about 10% only, if you are lucky!

11. Jogging Track: Basically the trail the labourers and equipment left behind while they went about the site, building the stuff. That little lane where incessant treading killed the grass. While you jog along, apart from burning calories, you will also come quite close to shooting for Man Vs. Wild.

12. Boating and Water Sports in Season: With no sewerage or storm water pumping infrastructure, you will need that occasional once in a while boat rescue during the heavy monsoon. A character building experience nevertheless, for you and your children!

13. Hurry! Only few units remain: We will let you figure this out. While we roll on the floor, laughing!

Cheers!