What Questions Should You Ask a Real Estate Agent?
Fifteen questions worth asking before you hand anyone your weekends, including the three about money that most buyers are too polite to ask.
If you only ask one question, ask this one: are you registered with RERA, and what is your registration number? Under Section 9 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, a real estate agent who facilitates the sale of a flat has to be registered. An agent who cannot give you a number in under ten seconds is either new, careless or not registered, and all three change how you should treat everything else they tell you.
The rest of this page is the other fourteen questions to ask a real estate agent, in the order they actually come up, with a note on what a good answer sounds like. Three of them are about money and most buyers skip them out of politeness. Those are the three worth asking first.
The short version
- Agent registration is not optional. Section 62 of the same Act sets a penalty of ₹10,000 per day of default, which can run up to 5% of the property cost.
- You can check any Punjab agent yourself in about a minute on the Punjab RERA registered agent search.
- Brokerage in north India usually runs 1% to 2% of the deal value from each side. Haryana capped it at 1% in total back in 2020, but Zirakpur is in Punjab, so that cap does not cover your deal.
- Ask who else is paying the agent on your transaction. A builder incentive you do not know about is the most common reason a buyer gets steered.
- Get the possession date in writing. A date said out loud on a site visit is worth nothing later.
Four questions to ask a real estate agent about their credentials
1. What is your RERA registration number?
Then go and check it. The Punjab RERA agent search is public and takes a minute. Registration in Punjab runs for five years and then has to be renewed, so an old number is worth checking rather than assuming.
2. How long have you worked in this specific area?
Not in property generally. In Zirakpur, or in the two or three roads you are looking at. A real estate agent who covers the whole of the Tricity knows less about Dhakoli than one who sells there every week. You are buying local knowledge, so test it: ask which of two nearby societies has the better water supply and see whether the answer is specific.
3. Can I speak to two buyers you closed with in the last year?
A working agent has these. The ones who hesitate usually hesitate for a reason. You are not checking that the agent is pleasant. You are checking what happened after the money moved, which is when most agents go quiet.
4. Is this project registered with RERA, and what is its number?
Separate from the agent’s own registration. The Act bars an agent from facilitating a sale in a project that is required to be registered and is not. If the project number does not exist, the problem is bigger than the agent.
Three questions about money, which are the awkward ones
5. What is your commission, and who pays it?
Ask before the first site visit, not after you have fallen for a flat. In north India the usual figure is 1% to 2% of the deal value from each side, though it varies with the size of the deal and how much work is involved. Haryana went further and capped brokerage at 1% in total, half from each side, under its property dealer rules. Zirakpur is in Punjab, so that cap does not apply here and the number is whatever the two of you agree. Agree it in writing at the start.
6. Do you also represent the seller or the builder on this deal?
Often the honest answer is yes, and that is not automatically a problem. It becomes a problem when you did not know. Ask it plainly and watch how quickly the answer comes.
7. Does the builder pay you more for some projects than others?
This is the question almost nobody asks and the one that explains the most. Builder incentives vary a lot between projects, and a slow-selling tower usually pays better than a popular one. If the first three options an agent shows you happen to be the three with the best incentive, you are being shown a payout and not a shortlist.
Five questions about the specific flat
8. Why is this unit still available?
Every unsold flat has a reason. North-facing, above the generator, overlooking the service road, a floor nobody wants. A good agent tells you the reason and lets you decide whether you care. A bad one says the market is slow.
9. What is the total cost, including everything that is not in the price?
The headline price is rarely what leaves your account. Ask for the figure that includes stamp duty, registration, GST where it applies, parking, club membership, power backup charges, the maintenance deposit and anything labelled as a one-time charge. The gap between the two numbers in Zirakpur is routinely several lakh.
10. What is the committed possession date, and will you put it in writing?
Spoken dates slip and nobody remembers who said what. Written dates are enforceable. We have a listing where the developer has quoted more than one possession date, and the only sensible answer there was to tell buyers to get the committed date on paper before paying anything. Treat any verbal date as an estimate.
11. What is the title history, and is the land use approved for housing?
Ask who owned the land before the builder, whether there is a mortgage on it, and whether the change of land use came through. Your lawyer will check this properly. The point of asking the agent is to see whether they know, because an agent who has never looked at the title of a project they are selling is telling you something about how they work.
12. What will monthly maintenance be, and who decides it?
A figure per square foot per month, and whether it is fixed for a period. A large clubhouse and a lot of landscaping are lovely in a walkthrough video and expensive every month afterwards. Also ask when the society hands over to a residents association, because until then the builder sets the rate.
Three questions about the area
13. What is this road like at 9am on a weekday and 9pm on a Saturday?
Site visits happen at convenient hours, which is exactly when the road looks best. Ask the agent to describe the bad hours, then go and see one of them yourself. Our guide to the best areas to buy a flat in Zirakpur goes through how the main roads differ.
14. What is planned within 500 metres that I cannot see today?
An empty plot next door is not a park. Ask what is approved for the land you can see from the balcony, because the view you are paying a premium for may have a tower on it in three years.
15. What have resale and rent actually done here in the last three years?
Not a projection. What has happened. An agent who has worked an area for years can tell you what a similar flat resold for, and an agent who cannot should say so rather than guess. If you are weighing Zirakpur against the obvious alternative, our Zirakpur versus Mohali comparison sets out where each one wins.
Answers that should make you walk away
Some answers are worse than no answer.
- “RERA is not needed for this one.” It is, or the project is small enough to be exempt, and the agent should be able to tell you which. Vagueness here is the end of the conversation.
- “Book today, the price goes up tomorrow.” Prices do move. They rarely move tonight. Urgency is the oldest tool in the business and it exists to stop you checking things.
- “Pay the token in cash and we will sort the paperwork after.” No.
- “Don’t worry about the possession date, they always deliver.” No builder always delivers.
- Anything about the builder’s reputation with no specifics. Ask which project they delivered last, when it was promised and when it actually handed over. Those are three facts, and a working real estate agent has them.
What a good agent will ask you
The questions should go both ways. A real estate agent who has not asked your budget, your loan position, how many people will live in the flat and when you need to move is about to waste a lot of your weekends. The ones worth your time ask whether you have had a loan pre-approved before they take you anywhere, because it changes which projects are worth seeing.
If you are not yet sure what size you need, settle that before the visits start. Our comparison of 2 BHK versus 3 BHK is a better use of an hour than a site visit to the wrong flat, and the ready to move versus under construction piece covers the other fork.
Now ask us the same questions
We are an agent ourselves, and the questions to ask a real estate agent do not change because the agent is us. Everything above applies, so here is where we stand on the awkward ones.
We earn when you buy. That is a real conflict and no amount of friendliness removes it, which is why we would rather you check us than take our word. Ask us for our RERA registration number and we will send it. Ask whether a builder is paying us on a particular project and we will tell you, because you will find out eventually and it is better that you hear it from us.
We do not publish prices on this site. Prices and availability in Zirakpur change week to week, and a number printed on a page in March is a number that misleads somebody in August. Ask and we will send the current sheet for whatever you are looking at.
Start wherever is useful: the full list of flats in Zirakpur, the ready to move projects if you need possession soon, or the societies families tend to shortlist. If you would rather see a project before you give anyone your afternoon, there are walkthrough videos for 17 of them.
This site is run by Dewan Realtors, who have been selling in the Chandigarh Tricity for years. Their own account of how that reputation was built is in why Dewan Realtors is becoming a trusted name in Zirakpur, and if you are buying across the district line their guide to picking a property dealer in Mohali applies the same tests. More about the team is on the about page.
Sources
- Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, Section 9 (registration of agents) and Section 62 (penalty of ₹10,000 per day, up to 5% of property cost).
- Punjab RERA, search registered real estate agents, retrieved October 2026.
- Haryana brokerage cap of 1%, split equally between buyer and seller, under the Haryana Regulation of Property Dealers and Consultants Rules 2009, approved October 2020. Applies in Haryana only.