Bangalore farmland guide

Start with a direction, not a listing

Most buyers waste weeks comparing parcels on opposite sides of the city. Pick the side you can actually reach on a weekday evening or a Saturday morning, because land you cannot visit easily is land you will not maintain. North means Devanahalli, the airport belt, Chikkaballapur and Doddaballapur. East means Hoskote and Malur. South means Kanakapura Road, Sarjapur Road, Anekal, Hosur and Denkanikottai. West means Nelamangala and the Mysore Road stretch through Bidadi and Ramanagara.

• Drive the approach road yourself, in the rain if you can
• Note how far the nearest town, hospital and hardware shop are
• Ask who farms the land next door and what they grow

How much land costs, and why an average misleads

There is no single price per acre around Bangalore. Road frontage, distance from a highway, water availability, soil, existing plantation, documentation quality and whether the parcel sits inside a developed layout all move the number, often by several times within the same taluk. Instead of quoting an average, compare the asking price on each published listing and normalise by acre using the price per acre shown.

• Compare price per acre, not total price, when parcels differ in size
• Ask what is included: fencing, borewell, power connection, approach road
• Budget separately for stamp duty, registration, legal opinion and survey

Land classification and what you can build

Agricultural land is recorded for cultivation. Converted land carries permission for non-agricultural use. Managed farm parcels and approved layouts fall somewhere between, depending on the sanction they hold. What you may build, and whether a bank will lend against the parcel, follows from this classification rather than from what the seller plans to allow.

• Confirm classification from the revenue record, not from a brochure
• Ask whether conversion has been applied for, granted, or never started
• Check local planning authority limits before designing a farmhouse

Water, access and power

These three decide whether land is usable. A borewell that yields well in December may not in May, so ask about depth, yield and when it was last tested. Access must be a legal right of way, not a neighbour's goodwill. Power may be several poles away, and extending a line is at your cost.

• Ask for the borewell depth, yield and drilling date in writing
• Trace the access road on the survey sketch, not only on the ground
• Confirm the nearest transformer and who pays for the extension

Finish the paperwork before the advance

Collect the records, get an advocate's opinion, then pay. Reversing that order is the single most expensive mistake buyers make in this region. The document checklist lists each record in the order it is usually obtained.