The 12-document home loan sanction checklist

Most home-loan delays have nothing to do with eligibility. They happen because the file reaches credit with a document missing, and every resubmission sends you to the back of the queue. Here is the complete set for an NCR purchase, split the way a lender’s checklist splits it.

Your side of the file

For salaried applicants: (1) PAN and Aadhaar, (2) three months of salary slips, (3) six months of bank statements for the salary account, (4) Form 16 or ITRs for two years, (5) current employer’s appointment or increment letter, and (6) a passport-size photo with the signed application. Self-employed applicants replace items 2–5 with: three years of ITRs with computation, audited financials where applicable, twelve months of current-account statements, and proof of business continuity such as the GST registration. Add co-applicant documents in full — a co-owner must be a co-applicant, and a missing co-applicant KYC is the single most common file-stopper we see.

The property side of the file

For an under-construction unit in a lender-approved project the property file is short: the allotment letter or draft builder-buyer agreement, the payment receipt(s), and the project’s RERA number — the lender maps it to its internal APF (approved project file). Where the project is not pre-approved, expect the lender’s legal and technical teams to ask for the title chain, the sanctioned plan and the licence/approval set, which the developer must supply. For resale, add the full chain of prior agreements, the latest registered sale deed, mutation records and a no-dues letter from the society. The two property documents buyers most often forget: the exact unit’s carpet-area disclosure and the parking allotment terms.

The sequence that saves three weeks

Do it in this order. First, get a pre-sanction on your income file alone — most lenders will hold a sanction for three to six months. Second, shortlist within projects that are already on your lender’s approved list; on our project pages the approved-lender strip shows exactly which of the six partner institutions have the project on file. Third, negotiate the unit knowing your sanction amount, and hand the property file over the same week. Files assembled in this order routinely disburse in 10–15 working days; files begun after unit selection average five weeks in our experience.

Use the pre-sanction window to settle the loan’s shape as well: repo-linked floating rates reprice with policy moves in both directions, while the fixed-rate premium buys certainty you may not need if prepayment is your plan. Ask each lender for its spread over the repo rate, not just today’s headline number.

Sanction is not disbursal

A sanction letter approves you; disbursal approves the transaction. Between the two sit the legal opinion, the technical valuation, the signed agreement, franking or e-stamping, and — for construction-linked disbursals — the developer’s demand letter matched to a certified stage of work. Keep 3–4% of the property value liquid for stamp duty, registration and charges that the loan will not cover, and do not schedule the registry until the disbursal cheque’s date is confirmed in writing.

Finally, protect the file you have built. Every fresh loan application triggers a hard credit enquiry, and a burst of them inside a month can shave a score that took years to build — shortlist two lenders, not six, and let a single advisor run parallel quotes instead. Do not close old credit cards in the sanction window (age of credit helps you), do not co-sign anyone else’s loan mid-process, and keep the down-payment funds seasoned in your own account for at least three months, because a large unexplained credit the week before sanction earns exactly the scrutiny you would expect. The checklist gets you sanctioned; these habits keep the sanction priced at the rate you were quoted.