Document type / Article 5(g)(a)
What it costs to sign land over to a builder
When a landowner hands land to a builder to develop, the agreement carries 3.50 per cent stamp duty on the value of the land and a registration fee of one hundred rupees. On ten acres in this region that is a substantial number, and this page works it out.
The rate sits between the 4.9 per cent on an outright sale and the 0.25 per cent on a partition, because the law treats the agreement as a partial disposal. The power of attorney that usually accompanies it is charged separately and at its own rate, which is where owners are most often caught short.
Stamp duty 3.50 per centRegistration fee Rs. 100Article 5(g)(a) and 5(ga)Last verified: 4 August 2026
01What the document is
A development agreement is what a landowner signs when a builder is going to build on their land. The owner keeps the title. The builder gets the right to develop, and usually a share of what is built or of what it sells for.
Gujarat charges it at 3.50 per cent under Article 5(g)(a) of the stamp table, on the consideration or the market value for agricultural land and on the market value for land already converted to building use. The registration fee is a flat Rs. 100 under Article 5(ga), which is one of only four flat fees in the whole table.
The duty is substantial and the registration fee is a token. Owners regularly plan for the wrong one of the two.
| Charge | Article | Applies to | Rate | Charged on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stamp duty | 5(g)(a) | Agreement for construction development or transfer of immovable property | 3.50% | consideration or market value on agricultural, market value on non-agricultural |
| Registration fee | 5(ga) | Development agreement | Rs. 100 | fixed |
02What it comes to on ten acres
Ten acres in Bhimtalav village handed to a builder under a development agreement. The stamp duty is Rs. 1,74,220 and the registration fee is one hundred rupees.
| Line item | Input | Rate | Amount Rs. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Government valuation of ten acres | 4,97,770 x 10 acres | = | 49,77,700 |
| 02 | Stamp duty, Article 5(g)(a) | on 49,77,700 | 3.50% | 1,74,220 |
| 03 | Registration fee, Article 5(ga) | flat amount | Rs. 100 | 100 |
| Total on the agreement | = | 1,74,320 | ||
The reason the duty is so much larger than the fee is that the two charges are measuring different things. The duty taxes the value of what is being handed over. The fee pays for a clerk to enter a document in a register, and the department has priced that at a hundred rupees whatever the deal is worth.
Note also that the 3.50 per cent sits below the 4.9 per cent charged on a sale but well above the 0.25 per cent on a partition. The agreement is treated as a partial disposal rather than a full one.
03The paired power of attorney
A development agreement is very often signed alongside a power of attorney letting the builder deal with the land. That second document is charged separately, at 3.50 per cent of market value under Article 45(g) where it is a power to develop, and at 4.9 per cent under Article 45(f) where it authorises a sale for payment.
An owner planning for the duty on one document and not the other will be short by the same amount again. The rates are on the power of attorney page.
The words on this page, in plain English
- Consideration
- The price actually written into the deed.
- Market value
- Not the price on the street. In this context it is the value the government calculates from the jantri, and it is what the tax is charged on.
- Non-agricultural land, NA land
- Farmland that has been legally converted to building use by an order under section 65 of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code. Until that order exists the land is still farmland in law, whatever is standing on it.
- Final plot
- The serviced plot an owner is left holding once a town planning scheme has redrawn the area. It is smaller than the original field but it has road access and services.
- Town planning scheme, TP scheme
- The process that takes the existing farm plots of an area, lays roads and services across them, and hands each owner back a smaller serviced plot.