How we value a property you have not seen in twenty years

Almost every job we take has at least one of these problems. A deed nobody can find, a tenant who does not want a stranger measuring rooms, a cousin who holds the keys and is not returning calls, an address that has been renumbered since you left. None of it stops the valuation. Here is how each is actually handled.

You do not need to fly back

Our engineer goes to the property. That is the whole point of the service. You authorise the visit, we coordinate access with whoever is there, and you get photographs and measurements without booking a flight.

Every site photograph carries the date, time and location it was taken. That is deliberate. Years later, when an officer or a judge asks whether anybody actually went, the metadata answers.

When the papers are missing

This is the most common worry and the least serious one.

• No original sale deed. Certified copies can be obtained from the sub registrar office where it was registered. The index is searchable by year and party name.
• No mutation record. Municipal and revenue records can be pulled, and many states now have them online.
• No old property tax receipts. The municipal body holds the history.
• Nothing at all from before 2001. Not fatal. Establishing a 1 April 2001 value rests on the notified rates of the period and recorded transactions in the locality, not on your own paperwork.

Tell us what is missing at the start. We would rather plan around a gap than discover it halfway through.

When somebody else controls access

A tenant in possession, a relative living there, a caretaker, a sibling in a dispute. All normal.

For a tenanted property we arrange a time that suits the tenant and inspect what is reasonably accessible. A tenant is not obliged to let a stranger wander through, and we do not need them to. External inspection, common areas, the accessible portions, plus the documentary and comparable evidence, produce a defensible figure. Where access is genuinely refused, the report says so plainly and states what was and was not seen. An honest limitation is survivable. A pretended inspection is not.

Where relatives are in dispute, we deal with whoever can lawfully grant access and we do not take sides. Our instruction comes from the person who engaged us and the report goes to them.

When you are not sure what you own

More common than you would think, particularly with ancestral land and undivided shares. Somebody inherits a fraction of a holding they have never visited, described in a document written in a language they do not read.

We work from the documents to identify the parcel, cross check against revenue records and the survey number, and confirm on the ground. Occasionally the answer is that the extent is unclear or the boundary is disputed, and the report says that rather than inventing certainty. If there is an encroachment, we record it, because a valuation that ignores an encroachment is worthless to you later.

Valuing as at a past date

Frequently what is needed is not today's value but the value on a particular day in the past: 1 April 2001 for capital gains, the date of death for probate or for a foreign cost base, the date of separation for a family court.

That is done from the notified circle or ready reckoner rates in force then, registered transactions in the locality from that period, and the physical characteristics of the property adjusted for its condition at the time. It takes longer than a current valuation because the evidence has to be retrieved rather than observed. Commission it early.

Power of attorney, and when you need one

You do not need to grant a power of attorney to get a valuation. You need it to sell. People often conflate the two and lose weeks. If a sale is coming, start the power of attorney process in parallel with the valuation, because attestation at a consulate and subsequent stamping in India both take time.

What we need from you to start

• The address, as precisely as you can manage, with any survey or plot number.
• Whatever documents you do have, photographed on a phone is fine.
• The purpose of the valuation and the date it must be as at.
• A contact in India who can open the door, if there is one.
• Any complication you already know about. Tenant, dispute, encroachment, missing papers.

That last one matters most. Nothing on the list surprises us. What causes delay is finding out in week two.