PropertyIQ

About PropertyIQ

66% of all civil cases in India are related to land or property disputes.** A significant part of this problem arises from transactions where buyers and tenants are unable to clearly understand the legal requirements, costs, records, and contractual risks involved in a property transaction.

One of the challenges is that property laws and requirements vary significantly across Indian states. The rules governing who can purchase property, the permissions required, applicable taxes and stamp duty, land records, units of measurement, and tenancy can all change from one state to another. For someone purchasing property outside their home state, understanding these differences can be difficult, particularly when the relevant information is spread across different laws, government sources, and languages.

PropertyIQ is a cross-state property copilot designed to simplify this process. It helps users understand three fundamental questions before entering into a property transaction:

• Who is legally allowed to buy or rent the property?
• What will the transaction actually cost?
• What legal risks or important terms are hidden in the agreement?

PropertyIQ currently covers Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Punjab, with support for sale deeds and rent agreements.

The platform begins by identifying the rules that are relevant to the user's specific transaction. Users can select where they currently live, where the property is located, and the type of transaction they are considering. PropertyIQ then highlights the legal and financial requirements that apply to that particular situation, such as purchase restrictions, permissions, applicable rates, concessions, and relevant property records.

The objective is to answer the key questions that arise before a property transaction, in simple language and with references to the underlying law. This allows users to understand the legal position before committing their money or signing an agreement.

How PropertyIQ Works

PropertyIQ is built around a continuously updated legal database that uses authentic legal and government sources. Since property laws and rates can change, the system is designed to regularly refresh its legal information rather than relying on a static collection of rules.

When a user performs an eligibility or property check, PropertyIQ does not simply provide an AI model with a broad property-law question. Instead, it first identifies the specific legal information relevant to that transaction.

For example, the system can take into account:

• the state where the user is located;
• the state where the property is located;
• the type of transaction;
• the user's role in the transaction; and
• the particular legal question being asked.

It then retrieves the relevant provisions from its legal database using a contextual retrieval approach, drawing on techniques such as those described in Anthropic's work on contextual retrieval.

Only this relevant legal context is provided to the AI system. The AI is instructed to base its response on the retrieved material rather than relying on general information or unsupported assumptions.

This approach is important because property law is highly dependent on jurisdiction and context. A general answer about property law may not apply to a particular state, type of property, or transaction. By first retrieving the relevant law and then generating an answer from that material, PropertyIQ aims to reduce irrelevant answers and the risk of unsupported AI-generated information.

Each finding is also accompanied by a source reference, allowing the user to see the legal provision or source on which the answer is based.

Changes during the Vibeathon window

As of 21 August, PropertyIQ had a primitive Eligibility Check and Decode Contract tool. The Eligibility Check relied on a largely hardcoded static database combined with a rule-based engine and an LLM, with the rule engine serving as a fallback when the AI failed, while Decode Contract relied almost entirely on the LLM. Since then, the system has been substantially re-architected around a dynamic legal database that is updated daily using Indian Kanoon and relevant state-specific sources. This database now powers a contextual RAG system using improved chunking to provide the AI with the most relevant legal provisions, significantly reducing hallucinations and improving the quality of analysis. Decode Contract has similarly evolved from basic paragraph-level LLM analysis into a more robust playbook-backed system incorporating applicable legal provisions and contractual best practices, along with redlining and safer alternative clause suggestions. Alongside these substantive improvements, the UI/UX has been redesigned for easier and more intuitive navigation, while the Compare and Toolkit pages have also undergone significant upgrades.

1. EligibilityCheck

The Eligibility Check uses a guided five-step process:

Your Route → The Property → About You → The Deal → Read It Back

Users select where they live and where the property is located, then provide details about the property, their buyer or residency status, and the proposed transaction.

The final report provides:

• Risk assessment: A LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, or CRITICAL rating, including a “Cannot Proceed as Structured” outcome where a legal requirement prevents the proposed transaction.
• Legal findings: Each finding is linked to the relevant legal provision through a “Where This Comes From” reference.
• Cost to close: An itemised estimate of stamp duty, registration fees, and applicable cess, calculated using the relevant valuation basis.
• Registration journey: A state-specific overview covering document preparation, valuation, duty payment, presentation, scrutiny, identification, registration, and handover.
• Document checklist: Relevant documents such as encumbrance certificates, khata certificates, PAN requirements, and RERA-related documents where applicable.

Users can also explore a worked example before conducting their own check.

2. Decode Contract

Decode Contract allows users to upload or paste a sale deed or rent agreement and choose between two modes:

• Find the Risks: Identifies potentially one-sided clauses, missing mandatory provisions, and clauses based on legislation that may no longer be in force.
• Explain It to Me: Explains the contract and its legal effect in simple language.

The analysis is available in English, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, and Kannada, with legal findings connected to the relevant provisions.

The tool includes sample agreements demonstrating issues such as registration requirements, termination clauses, incorrect rebate claims, and statutory compliance.

It also attempts to automatically identify the state and document type from the document.

In development: OCR for scanned deeds and improved cross-language analysis.

3. Compare Costs

Compare Costs allows users to compare the estimated costs of the same property transaction across the four states covered by PropertyIQ.

Users enter the transaction type, registration ownership, area category, and transaction value. The tool then calculates the applicable charges for each state and identifies the lower and higher-cost options.

The tool also explains the factors behind these differences, including urban and rural rates, city-specific charges, registration fees, cess, and applicable concessions.

A dedicated Gender Concession section explains differences in stamp-duty treatment for female purchasers. The tool also provides a state-wise comparison of other exemptions and concessions, together with the potential savings.

4. Toolkit

The Toolkit contains five reference tools:

1. Land Unit Converter Converts more than 15 regional land units, including Bigha, Biswa, Kanal, Marla, and Guntha, into square feet. It also shows which units are commonly used in different state land records.

2. Records & Plot IDs Explains how property is identified and recorded in each state, including records such as Jamabandi, Maharashtra's 7/12 Extract, Karnataka's RTC, and Punjab's Jamabandi/Fard. It also provides the relevant government portal and information on document languages.

3. Registration Process Explains the property registration process step by step, from document preparation and valuation to payment, presentation, scrutiny, identification, registration, and handover.

4. Exemptions Provides a state-wise reference to applicable stamp-duty exemptions and concessions.

5. Jurisdiction Helps users identify the appropriate registration or government office responsible for a particular property based on its location.