How to Check if a Builder Floor or PG Building in Delhi Is Legal and Safe Before You Buy or Rent

You can check most of what matters about a Delhi residential building with two documents, some counting from the street and a walk from the basement to the terrace. Ask for the sanctioned building plan and the occupancy certificate. Count the floors and the flats against what the Master Plan allows for the plot. Look at what has been done to the stilt and the basement. Find the second way out. Then look for the cracks, damp and alterations that tell you how the structure has been treated. None of this replaces a structural engineer before a purchase, but it filters out the buildings you should walk away from, and it takes an afternoon. This guide is for buyers of builder floors, families renting, and parents choosing a PG for a student.

Why Is Everyone Asking This Now?

On 6 September 2026 a five-storey building run as a boys' PG collapsed in Satya Niketan, near Delhi University's South Campus, and seven people died. According to The Week's report of the MCD's statement, the building stood on a plot of around 55 square yards with a basement and ground to fourth floors, no sanctioned building plan was available for it, and the construction in the basement was unauthorised; the police have said renovation work in the basement triggered the collapse. The corporation then ordered illegal constructions above four floors sealed, and the government announced structural audits for PGs and other public-use buildings. The cause is still under a magisterial inquiry. The lesson for anyone choosing a building does not need to wait for it: nothing about that building's legal status was visible from inside a rented room, and all of it could have been asked about.

Which Documents Should You Ask For?

Two, and a seller or landlord of a lawful building has both. The first is the sanctioned building plan: the drawing approved by the MCD or DDA, showing the number of floors, the dwelling units, the stilt, the basement if any, and the staircase. Under the Unified Building Bye-Laws for Delhi 2016 the application for sanction also carries a structural safety certificate signed by a structural engineer, so a sanctioned building is one whose structure somebody qualified took responsibility for. The second is the occupancy-cum-completion certificate. Clause 2.7.2 of the bye-laws says 'no person shall occupy or allow any other person to occupy any building or part thereof for any purpose' until it has been granted, and section 346 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act says the same. For a purchase, give both to your own architect and have the building compared with the plan, floor by floor. A sale deed proves who owns the floor. It says nothing about whether the floor was allowed to be built.

How Many Floors and Flats Is the Plot Allowed?

Stand across the road and count. The Master Plan for Delhi 2021, as modified, caps a house on a residential plot at 15 metres, or 17.5 metres where there is stilt parking, which is what produces the familiar stilt plus four floors. A building with five or six floors above the stilt on an ordinary residential plot is a question you need answered before anything else, and it is exactly the category the MCD has said it will seal. The plan also caps the number of dwelling units by plot size: three on a plot up to 50 sqm, four on plots above 50 and up to 250 sqm, six above 250 and up to 750 sqm. If the letterboxes, meters or doorbells show more units than that, floors have been subdivided. Both limits matter beyond the law: the bye-laws list the number of floors and the number of dwelling units among the deviations that can never be regularised for a fee, as our guide to MCD notices and regularisation explains, so a flat in such a building can be sealed whatever the seller promises. The limits themselves are set out in our plot-size guide and our guide to stilt plus four.

What Should You Look at in the Stilt and the Basement?

A stilt is open parking on columns. If it has been walled in to make a shop, an office or a flat, the parking the plan depended on is gone, and parking norms are another item the bye-laws will not regularise. Look at the columns while you are there: a column that has been chased for a pipe, notched for a shutter or cut back for a wider entrance has lost strength it was designed to have. The basement deserves more suspicion. The Master Plan exempts a house basement from FAR only when it is used for household storage and parking, and it may not extend beyond the ground-floor coverage. A basement fitted out with bedrooms, a basement that is visibly newer than the building above it, or one where digging or waterproofing work is going on under an occupied building are all reasons to ask hard questions. Water standing in a basement after the monsoon is a structural matter as well as a nuisance, because it sits against the foundations.

Which Fire Safety Signs Can You Check Yourself?

Walk the route you would take at night with the lights out. Is there one staircase or two? Is the staircase clear, or is it storage for cylinders, inverters and scooters? Are the electricity meters and their wiring packed into the space under the only stairs? Do the windows and balconies have fixed grills with no openable panel? Does the terrace door open? Section 349 of the DMC Act lets the Commissioner order a building vacated if it 'is not provided with sufficient means of egress in case of fire', which tells you how seriously the law takes the question. Taller buildings need more than exits: under the Delhi Fire Service Rules a residential building above 15 metres, and a hotel or guest house above 12 metres, needs fire clearance. The bye-laws place hostels, dormitories and lodging houses in the residential class, and the government has set up a committee to review the guidelines for PGs. Our Fire NOC guide has the thresholds. For a PG, ask the operator directly whether the building has a fire safety certificate, and look for extinguishers that are in date and an alarm that someone has tested.

What Structural Warning Signs Can a Non-Engineer See?

Diagonal cracks running from the corners of doors and windows. Cracks in columns or beams, as opposed to plaster. Rust stains, or concrete that has fallen away to show steel, on balconies, chajjas and the underside of staircases. Doors that have started to jam, floors that slope, a gap opening between a wall and the slab above it. Fresh plaster or paint in one patch of an otherwise tired building, which can mean a crack has been covered for the viewing. Our guide to structural warning signs explains which of these are cosmetic and which are not. Then look for what has been changed: walls removed on the ground floor to make an open shop, water tanks multiplied on the terrace, a room built on the roof, a heavy generator on an upper floor. Alterations that no engineer designed are the part of a building's history most worth asking about.

What If You Are Renting a PG Room, Not Buying?

You will not get the sanctioned plan, so use the short version. Count the floors from the street. Find two ways out from the room you are being shown and check that the staircase is clear to the ground. Refuse a basement room. Look at the stilt or ground floor for removed walls and cut columns. Ask whether the building has a fire safety certificate, and whether it has been inspected since the September audit of PG hubs was ordered; a straight answer is a good sign and an irritated one is information too. Look at the ceiling of the top-floor rooms and the underside of the stairs for rust stains and fallen concrete. If building work is going on anywhere in the structure while people are living in it, particularly at the bottom, ask what it is and who designed it.

What If You Are Buying an Old Floor and Plan to Renovate?

Put a structural engineer's assessment into the deal before the token money, not after the registry; our structural audit guide explains what it involves and what to have ready. Have your architect confirm what is sanctioned, because your renovation will need permission if it adds area or touches the structure, and a permission cannot be built on top of an unauthorised floor. Then price the renovation against the building's real condition. Our published renovation rates run from ₹800 to ₹3,000 per sqft, and concealed structural repairs are estimated separately after inspection, because they vary from nothing to substantial. If you are weighing an old floor against building your own, our comparison of builder floors and independent houses sets out the trade.

What Should Building Owners Take From This?

Buyers, tenants and parents are now asking these questions, and an owner who can answer them is in a stronger position than one who cannot. Keep the sanctioned plan and the occupancy certificate where you can produce them. Get an engineer's report on an older building and act on it. Clear the staircase, restore the stilt, and stop using the basement for anything the plan does not allow. If part of the building is unauthorised, find out now which part can be regularised and which cannot.

Nirman Ved builds new houses to sanctioned plans from ₹1,500 per sqft and carries out structural repair, waterproofing and renovation on existing buildings across Delhi NCR, to the engineer's and architect's drawings. If you are buying a floor you intend to renovate, or you own a building and want its condition put right, call +91-7838355055 or book a free site visit.