M3M IFC resale

M3M IFC — the International Financial Centre — sits in Sector 66, Gurugram, on Golf Course Extension Road. M3M's own project list files it under delivered for both its office and its retail component, and the restaurant levels are open and trading. That fact governs everything about buying here.

A finished, occupied commercial building can be inspected, and almost nobody bothers. Go on a Tuesday at one in the afternoon and again on a Saturday evening. Count the shutters that are down. Ask the security supervisor how many floors are occupied. None of that is available to someone buying off a floor plan, and it is the whole advantage of buying resale.

Two different assets, one address

Office and retail sit inside the same building and behave nothing alike. Establish which one you are being shown before anyone quotes a rate per square foot, because the two are not comparable numbers.

Office space in the tower is ordinarily sold bare shell — a slab, a core, and services brought to the floor. The fit-out is yours or your tenant's. Ask the seller specifically what is being handed over: bare shell, warm shell, or a suite left fitted by a previous occupier. That difference is real money and it is routinely glossed over in a listing.

Retail and F&B units occupy the lower levels, which M3M describes as an air-conditioned boulevard across the ground, first and second floors. A restaurant unit is a purchase of its own kind: you may be buying a shell with an operator's fit-out standing in it, and who owns that fit-out when the lease ends is a clause, not an assumption.

Occupancy is the asset, not the address

In commercial property the building's trading condition is most of what you are paying for. A unit in a half-empty scheme and a unit in a busy one are different assets at the same rate per square foot, and no brochure tells them apart.

So look at the unit, not the building's reputation. Which level is it on, and does that level get walked? Is it on the path between the lift lobby and the food, or around a corner from it? Ground-floor frontage on a working boulevard and a second-floor unit behind the escalator are not the same investment.

We publish no footfall figures for this project, because we have no source we would stand behind. If a seller quotes one, ask where it came from and for what period.

If the unit comes with a tenant

A pre-leased unit is bought for its lease, so read the lease before you read the listing. The things that decide what you are actually buying:

• Lock-in and remaining term. A lease with eight months left and one with six years left are different assets.
• Whether the lease survives the sale, and whether the tenant must consent.
• Escalation — how much, how often, from what date.
• The security deposit. Does it pass to you at closing, or does the seller keep it and leave you owing it back at the end?
• Rent actually received, not rent contracted. Ask for bank statements.

On assured returns and guaranteed rentals, one point is worth more than all the rest. An assured return is not a feature of the unit. It lives in a document — an MoU, an addendum, or a clause in the original buyer's agreement — between the developer and the person who bought first. It does not automatically follow the shop or the office floor to you, and we can find no authority saying it does. Treat it as transferring only if that document is itself assigned to you and the developer's transfer endorsement names it, in writing.

The rest follows from that: which named company is bound, and what the unit genuinely lets for on the open market the day the arrangement ends. We publish no return figure for this project.

What the purchase costs beyond the price

CAM. Charged monthly, ordinarily on the chargeable or super area rather than the carpet, and in an air-conditioned scheme it is not a small number. It is not published. Get the rate in writing from the maintenance agency, ask what it covers, and get a no-dues certificate — arrears attach to the unit, not to the seller.

GST. Commercial behaves differently from residential. A completed unit sold after its occupancy certificate is a transfer of immovable property and does not attract GST the way a booking in an unfinished building does; a unit without an OC is a different case, and so is the treatment of rent once you own it. Have a chartered accountant confirm all three against the specific unit.

Transfer, or registry. A registered deed means an ordinary sale, with stamp duty and registration paid to the state and the developer not involved. An unregistered unit goes back through the developer as a transfer, with its charges and its no-objection certificate — usually costlier on commercial than on a flat. The promoter company of record here is not M3M India itself, so establish early who signs.

Where we do not hold the answer, we say so and go and find it rather than filling the gap with an estimate. If anything here is wrong, tell us and it is corrected the same day.