Ready to Move or Under Construction

The choice is usually framed as paying more for certainty or paying less for patience. That is roughly right, but it misses the two things that actually decide it for most families: a tax difference worth several lakh, and the fact that the risks on each side are completely different in kind, not just in size.

Start with the tax, because it is the largest single number

A completed property sold after the competent authority has issued a completion or occupancy certificate attracts no GST at all. Under Schedule III of the CGST Act, the sale of a completed building is neither a supply of goods nor a supply of services, so it falls outside GST entirely.

An under-construction unit attracts 5 per cent GST, or 1 per cent if it qualifies as affordable housing — carpet area within 90 sq m for a city outside the listed metropolitan areas, and gross amount not more than ₹45 lakh. Both tests must be met, and the ₹45 lakh cap has not been revised since 2019.

So on a ₹60 lakh purchase, the GST difference alone is about ₹3 lakh. That is not a rounding error, and it substantially closes the price gap that under-construction units advertise.

What you are actually trading

The case for ready to move

You see exactly what you are buying. Not a rendering, not a sample flat — the actual rooms, the actual light at the actual time of day, the actual quality of the plaster and the tiling. In a market where specification is where builders economise quietly, this is worth a great deal.

You stop paying rent immediately. For a family currently renting, the overlap of rent and EMI through a two or three-year construction period is a real cost that rarely appears in the comparison, and it often exceeds the discount that tempted them.

You can see the neighbourhood as it is. Are the roads laid? Is water actually arriving? Are people living there? In Jodhpur, where water supply augmentation has run well behind schedule, being able to verify a working connection rather than trusting a plan is worth paying for.

And you carry no delivery risk. Whatever else happens, the house exists.

The case for under construction

The price is lower, and staged payments linked to construction milestones are far easier to manage than finding the whole amount at once. For a buyer who is saving as they go, this is often the deciding factor.

You get genuine choice — orientation, position within the layout, and in many cases real input on finishes and layout changes if you commit early enough. Changing a wall on a drawing costs nothing; changing it in a finished house costs a great deal.

And if you are buying early in a project that does get delivered, you capture the appreciation between launch and completion rather than paying it.

The risk that matters

Delay is the normal failure mode, not fraud. It is worth being clear-eyed about how common it is — and Jodhpur offers a useful local illustration from public infrastructure. The Rajiv Gandhi Lift Canal Phase 3 was targeted for completion in 2025; by June 2026 officials were still saying water would arrive "in the next three to four months". The city's elevated road was described by a minister in June 2025 as starting "within two months"; the foundation stone was laid eight months later.

Those are large, funded, government-backed projects with political attention on them. A private residential project has fewer protections against the same slippage, not more.

This is what RERA exists to address. A registered project means the developer has filed approvals, layout and timelines with the authority, must keep a fixed share of buyer payments in a dedicated project account, and must update progress. If commitments are not met, there is a defined route to complain rather than a civil suit. It does not make delay impossible. It makes it consequential.

How to reduce the risk if you buy under construction

• Check the RERA registration yourself on the Rajasthan portal, and compare what is filed there with what you have been told.
• Tie payments to construction stages, not to dates. If the schedule says "slab casting" rather than "March", the developer's incentive aligns with yours.
• Get the delay penalty in the agreement, with a figure and a trigger date.
• Look at what the developer has finished before, not at what they have started. Visit a completed project and talk to someone living in it.
• Prefer a project with visible progress over one at launch. You give up some discount and remove a lot of uncertainty.
• Ask how the project is funded. A developer relying entirely on your instalments to build is a developer whose timeline depends on other people buying.

Which suits whom

Ready to move generally suits you if you are currently renting, if you need to move within a defined window, if you are buying from outside Jodhpur and cannot supervise progress, or if the certainty is worth more to you than the discount. It also suits anyone who would find a two-year delay genuinely disruptive rather than merely annoying.

Under construction generally suits you if you already have somewhere to live and no deadline, if staged payments fit how you are funding the purchase, if you want real say over the design, and if you are able to check on the site regularly.

There is a middle position that gets overlooked: a project well advanced but not yet complete. You can see the actual construction quality, most of the delivery risk has already been absorbed, the price still carries some discount, and some customisation may remain possible.