Developer checklist: twenty checks before you buy off-plan in Georgia

How to use this checklist

Buying an apartment that is still being built means trusting a developer with your money for months or years before anything exists that you can register as yours. This checklist turns the checks in our guide to checking a developer into twenty statements you can answer one by one, for one project at a time. Work through them as the documents arrive: the registry extract for the plot, the construction permit, the draft contract, the specification. For each line choose Yes if you hold the document or the written answer that proves it, No if the document shows the opposite or the developer refused, and Not yet if the question is still open. The summary counts your answers, lists the open points and gives one of three results.

Nothing you enter leaves your device. The checklist runs in your browser and remembers your answers in this browser only, so you can close the page after one meeting with the developer and continue after the next; Start again clears them. To keep a record elsewhere, send the summary to yourself or to your lawyer with the WhatsApp button, or print the page.

What the three results mean

• Stop. One of the four statements about the land and the permit is answered No. These are the checks that decide whether the apartment you are buying can lawfully exist and be registered to you. A No here is not a matter for negotiation over price; it is a matter for a lawyer, before any payment.
• Not ready to sign. Nothing critical has failed, but at least one answer is No or Not yet, or some lines are unanswered. The list under the result shows exactly which. Send the developer those points in writing and wait for documents, not reassurances.
• All twenty checks passed. Every statement is answered Yes. That is the point at which a lawyer's reading of the full contract is worth paying for, not a replacement for it.

Why four checks can stop a purchase

Most of the twenty lines measure how careful and transparent a developer is. Four of them measure something harder: whether the building has a lawful basis. If the developer neither owns the plot nor holds a written right to build on it, the apartments may never be registrable. If the plot is under seizure, it cannot be freely disposed of until the seizure is lifted. If there is no construction permit, or the permit describes a smaller or different building, the floors being sold beyond it are unauthorised construction. Georgia's Spatial Planning Code issues permits in two stages, or three where the architectural design is approved first, and a building may not be used before its commissioning act, which is why the permit and its stage matter from the first payment.

Where each answer comes from

How to read the extract itself, line by line, is explained in our guide to the Public Registry extract, and the clauses behind lines 14 to 18 in the guide to the developer contract.

How to ask the developer for what is missing

Ask once, in writing, for everything on your open list, and keep the replies. A short message works better than a long one: name the project and the unit, list the documents you need by their proper names (the registry extract for the plot, the construction permit with its stage, the draft contract with the specification, the construction schedule, the name of the company that will sign), and ask for them by a date. Ask for copies, not descriptions. A developer with nothing to hide usually sends most of them within days; one who answers with a brochure, a promise or pressure to reserve quickly has answered the question in another way. If you work with a lawyer, send the developer's replies to the lawyer unchanged.

Reading a mixed result

Few projects pass all twenty lines at the first attempt, and a Not yet on the management company or the target registration date is ordinary early in construction. What matters is the pattern. Open points that close quickly with documents are a good sign. The same point that stays open after two written requests is a bad one. Several No answers in the money and contract group usually mean that the contract protects the developer more than the buyer; that can be fixed in negotiation, and the guide to the developer contract shows the wording to propose. Answers in the company group tell you how much weight to put on the developer's promises about everything else.

Comparing two or three projects

The checklist is most useful side by side. Fill it in for each project you are considering, send each summary to yourself, and compare the open lists rather than the counts. Two projects with the same number of Yes answers can differ completely: one may be missing only the name of the future management company, the other the construction permit. Prefer the project whose open points are about the future, such as dates still to be fixed, over the one whose open points are about the present, such as documents that should already exist. If the projects are similar on paper, the developer's record in lines 3 and 4 is usually the best tie-breaker, because it is the only part of the checklist that shows what the company has actually done rather than what it says it will do.

What this checklist cannot tell you

A checklist confirms that the right documents exist and say the right things. It cannot confirm that a document is genuine, that a signature is authorised, that the developer has the money to finish, or that the contract's clauses are enforceable as written. Those are questions for a lawyer, and for buyers abroad the legal due diligence service covers them. It also does not judge the apartment itself, its price or its prospects as an investment; the instalment calculator and the investment guides cover those.