Terms of use · Kothi

Definitions

In these terms, the following words have the following meanings unless the context requires otherwise:

Kothi, we, us: Kothi, the operator of the Platform, based in Lahore, Pakistan.
Platform: The website at kothi.pk, the Kothi mobile app, the agency console, and every service offered through them.
User, you: Anyone who visits or uses the Platform, with or without an account.
Customer: A User looking for property to buy or rent, or an owner offering a property through the Platform.
Owner: A person who submits their own property to the Platform so that the Authorised Agency for its Area can market it.
Area: A named locality in Kothi’s directory — a city, a society, a phase, a sector or a block. Areas are chosen by name; Kothi does not define territory by drawing on a map.
Slot: One combination of Area, property type (residential or commercial) and purpose (sale or rent). Every Area has four Slots.
Territory: The Slots an Agency has been authorised to publish in. Holding a Slot in a larger Area (a phase, for instance) covers every smaller Area inside it (its blocks).
Agency: A real estate business that has applied for Territory on the Platform, whether or not it has yet been authorised.
Authorised Agency: The one Agency that Kothi has authorised to publish Listings in a given Slot for as long as that authorisation lasts.
Listing: An advertisement for a property published on the Platform, including its photographs, video tours, description and price.
Enquiry: A Customer using Call or WhatsApp on a Listing, or submitting a property through the Platform. Each Enquiry carries the Customer’s verified mobile number.
Registration Fee: The one-time fee an Agency pays when it applies for Territory, in the amount shown to it at the time of application.
Monthly Fee: The recurring fee for a Slot, in the amount shown to the Agency when it took that Slot, payable from the point described in section 3.
Console: The agency console at agency.kothi.pk and the agency screens of the mobile app, through which an Agency manages its Listings, Enquiries and account.
Registration Details: The information a User gives to create or maintain an account, and the declarations and documents an Agency gives when it applies and when it is onboarded.
User Content: Anything a User uploads or submits to the Platform — Listings, photographs, videos, descriptions, property submissions, messages and reviews.
Intellectual Property Rights: Patents, trade marks, trade names, designs, copyright, database rights, know-how and every similar right, registered or not, anywhere in the world.
Unacceptable: Content that is illegal, indecent, obscene, hateful, threatening, defamatory, misleading, fraudulent, in breach of anyone’s rights (including privacy and Intellectual Property Rights), harmful to minors, connected with money laundering or other crime, in breach of any law or regulation of Pakistan, or damaging to Kothi’s reputation.
Privacy Policy: Kothi’s privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.
Effective Date: The date shown at the top of this page.

General terms

Kothi is a platform. It is not an estate agent, broker, developer or landlord, and it is not a party to any sale, purchase, lease or tenancy arranged between a Customer and an Agency or Owner. Kothi does not hold deposits, does not take commission on transactions, and does not act for either side.
Kothi authorises one Agency per Slot. A Listing in an Area is published by the Authorised Agency for that Slot, or by Kothi itself where no Agency is authorised for it yet. Who is answering for a Listing is stated on the Listing.
You must be at least eighteen years old and legally able to enter into contracts to hold an account or make an Enquiry. If you use the Platform for a business, you confirm you have that business’s authority to bind it.
Registration Details must be true, accurate, current and complete, and you must keep them so. Kothi may verify any detail you give, including by calling or messaging the number you provided.
Keep your password, sign-in codes and any device you are signed in on to yourself. Everything done through your account is treated as done by you until you tell us at hello@kothi.pk that it has been compromised.
Kothi may suspend or close any account, and remove any User Content, where in its reasonable judgement these terms have been breached or where it is otherwise appropriate — for example to protect other Users, an Agency or Kothi itself. Kothi will tell you by email or SMS. A person whose account has been closed must not register again, directly or through anyone else, without Kothi’s written permission.
Kothi owns, or is licensed to use, all Intellectual Property Rights in the Platform — its name and mark, its design, its text, its software, its directory of Areas, and the selection and arrangement of everything on it. Nothing here grants you any right to use the Kothi name or mark. You may view, and print one copy of, any page for your personal use; you may share a link to a Listing; you may not otherwise reproduce, modify or redistribute anything from the Platform.
You are granted a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable permission to use the Platform for its intended purpose: finding property, offering your own property, and — for an Authorised Agency — marketing property in its Territory. Any other use, including any collection, copying or aggregation of Listings or contact details, needs Kothi’s prior written permission. This permission ends automatically if you breach these terms.
You must not:
1. use the Platform unlawfully, fraudulently or maliciously, or for any purpose these terms do not allow;
2. use crawlers, scrapers, bots or any automated means to access the Platform or collect anything from it, other than ordinary search engines respecting our robots file;
3. copy, republish or resell Listings, photographs, videos or contact details, in bulk or one at a time, on any other website, portal, app or channel;
4. attempt to bypass any security, rate limit, sign-in or other protection on the Platform, or introduce anything designed to interrupt or damage it;
5. contact anyone found through the Platform for any purpose other than the property they enquired about or advertised, or contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted;
6. publish Listings in any Slot you are not authorised for, publish on behalf of someone else, or lend your account to anyone;
7. impersonate any person, Agency or Kothi, or misrepresent your connection with any of them;
8. post anything Unacceptable, or anything that infringes anyone’s rights;
9. collect other Users’ personal data, or interfere with anyone else’s use of the Platform;
10. remove or alter any notice of ownership, reference number or watermark on anything from the Platform.
By submitting User Content you grant Kothi a royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive licence to host, store, reproduce, display, adapt, crop, compress, distribute and promote it on the Platform and in Kothi’s own marketing, and you confirm you hold every right and consent needed to grant that licence. Kothi pays nothing for User Content and may edit or remove it at any time. Ownership of your User Content stays with you.
Kothi takes reports of infringement and fraud seriously. If you believe anything on the Platform infringes your Intellectual Property Rights, email hello@kothi.pk with: identification of the right and the material; where the material is on the Platform; your contact details; a statement, made in good faith, that the use is not authorised; and a statement that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner. Kothi will remove or disable material in good faith on receipt of a proper notice.
The Platform may contain links to other websites. Kothi does not control them and is not responsible for their content or their handling of your data.
Kothi provides a service, not goods. Nothing bought, sold or rented through an Enquiry is supplied by Kothi.

Fees and payment

For Customers and Owners

Searching, viewing, saving, making Enquiries and submitting your own property are free. Kothi never charges a Customer or an Owner, and no Agency may charge you for having found them through Kothi. If anyone asks you to pay Kothi, or to pay anyone to “secure” a property found on Kothi, do not pay and tell us at once.

For Agencies

Registration Fee. When an Agency applies for Territory it is invoiced a Registration Fee, once. The amount depends on the Slots applied for and is shown before the application is sent; adding Slots to an application increases it. The Registration Fee is due before the Agency’s own number can appear on Listings.
Refund of the Registration Fee. If, 45 days after the Registration Fee was paid, the Enquiries Kothi has delivered across all of the Agency’s Listings number fewer than ten, the Agency may ask for the Registration Fee back and Kothi will refund it in full. The request is made from the Console or by email. The refund is the Registration Fee only; nothing else is refundable.
Free Enquiries. The first ten Enquiries delivered on each Slot are free. No Monthly Fee is charged for a Slot until the tenth Enquiry has been delivered on it.
Monthly Fee. From the tenth Enquiry on a Slot, the Monthly Fee for that Slot is invoiced monthly in advance, at the price shown to the Agency when it took the Slot. Each Slot is invoiced on its own; a Slot that has not yet reached ten Enquiries is not charged.
Price changes. Kothi may change the Monthly Fee for a Slot on at least 30 days’ notice through the Console or by email. The new price applies from the next monthly period after the notice. An Agency that does not accept a change may give up the Slot before it takes effect and owes nothing further for it.
Payment. Fees are paid by bank transfer to the account named on the invoice, and the Agency records the transfer in the Console. A fee is “cleared” when Kothi has confirmed receipt. Invoices are in Pakistani rupees and are exclusive of any tax that the law requires to be added, which the Agency bears.
Late payment. If a Monthly Fee is not cleared by its due date:
1. Kothi’s number replaces the Agency’s on every Listing in that Slot immediately, and Enquiries in that Slot go to Kothi until the fee clears;
2. the Agency’s Listings stay live for a grace period of 30 days from the due date, unless Kothi has told the Agency a different period in writing;
3. if the fee is still unpaid at the end of the grace period, the Listings are removed, the Agency’s authorisation for the Slot ends, and the Slot is offered to the next Agency waiting for it;
4. amounts already invoiced remain payable, and Kothi may decline further applications from the Agency until they are settled.
No paid placement. Kothi does not sell featured, promoted, boosted, “hot” or sponsored positions of any kind, and never will. Search results and the video feed are ordered by the filters a Customer sets and nothing else. The only thing an Agency pays for is the exclusive right to publish in its Territory.
Disputes. An Agency that disputes an invoice must say so in writing within 14 days of the invoice date, giving its reasons. Every Enquiry is recorded with its time, Listing and channel, and Kothi will answer a dispute from that record. An undisputed invoice is accepted.

Authorised agencies

Only the Authorised Agency for a Slot may publish Listings in it. Where nobody is authorised for a Slot, Kothi may publish Listings there itself and answer Enquiries on them until an Agency is authorised. An Owner never publishes directly; an Owner’s property is marketed by the Authorised Agency for its Area.
To be authorised for a Slot, an Agency must, at the time it applies and for as long as it holds Territory:
1. be a real estate business established in Pakistan for at least one year, with a physical office;
2. hold a National Tax Number and be registered with the Federal Board of Revenue as a real estate agent, and hold any other registration the law requires of it;
3. for an Area administered by a housing authority or private society that registers dealers — such as DHA or Bahria Town — hold that authority’s current dealer registration for the Area;
4. already have at least the number of genuinely available properties in the Area that the Platform states for it when the Agency applies;
5. be able to answer every Enquiry within two hours during business hours, Monday to Saturday;
6. give true declarations about all of the above, and provide the supporting documents when Kothi asks for them at onboarding or at any time afterwards.
An application is a request, not an authorisation. Kothi may accept or decline any application in its discretion and does not have to give reasons. Where a Slot is already held, an accepted application joins the queue for that Slot and is offered it, in order, when it becomes free; an offer must be accepted within the time stated in it or it passes to the next in line.
One Agency per person. A person may stand behind one Agency only, and an Agency may not be used to hold Territory for the benefit of another business. Kothi may treat Agencies under common control as one.
Authorisation for a Slot is a personal, non-transferable permission from Kothi. It is not a property right and it cannot be sold, assigned, sub-let, shared or lent to anyone. An Agency may not publish another business’s properties as its own, and may not let another business publish under its account.
Holding a Slot in a larger Area covers every Area inside it while the authorisation lasts. Kothi will not authorise a second Agency for any part of Territory that is already held, and will not authorise an Agency for a larger Area while any part of it is held by someone else.
An account created by applying gives the Agency access to the Console at once, to add its documents, Listings and staff, and to pay its Registration Fee. The Agency’s own number appears on its Listings only after Kothi has approved the application and the Registration Fee has cleared.
Kothi may withdraw an Agency’s authorisation for a Slot, on notice, if the Agency:
1. no longer meets a requirement in this section, or made a declaration that was untrue;
2. fails to pay a fee as described in section 3;
3. persistently fails to answer Enquiries within two hours in business hours, as measured by Kothi;
4. publishes Listings that are Unacceptable, misleading, or for properties that are not genuinely available;
5. uses a Customer’s details for anything other than their Enquiry, or contacts Customers who asked not to be contacted;
6. breaches these terms in any other material way.
Where authorisation is withdrawn, the Agency’s Listings in that Slot are removed, Enquiries go to Kothi, and the Slot is offered to the next Agency in the queue.
An Agency may give up a Slot at any time from the Console. Fees already invoiced remain payable; nothing is charged for a Slot after it has been given up.
Kothi publishes each Authorised Agency’s business name, city, the Areas it holds, and — on its Listings while it is entitled to it — its contact number. The Agency agrees to that publication.

No spam policy

Sending unsolicited advertising or any other unsolicited communication to Kothi’s addresses, to Users, or through any part of the Platform is prohibited.
Contact details on the Platform — an Agency’s number on a Listing, a Customer’s number in an Enquiry, an Owner’s number in a submission — are provided for that property and nothing else. Using them to market anything, to add anyone to a list, or to approach them for another property, website or business is a breach of these terms.
Kothi may monitor messages sent through the Platform, by automated means or by people, to detect spam, fraud and abuse.
Unauthorised access to the Platform, and unauthorised use of the data on it, are offences under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 and other laws of Pakistan, carrying penalties that include imprisonment. Kothi will report such conduct to the relevant authorities and will cooperate with any prosecution.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Kothi is not liable to any User for:
1. indirect, consequential, special or exemplary loss or damage, even if Kothi was told it was possible;
2. loss of profit, business, revenue, contracts, opportunity, goodwill, anticipated savings, or data;
3. any loss arising from a transaction, negotiation, viewing, payment or dispute between a Customer and an Agency, an Owner, a developer or anyone else met through the Platform;
4. any inaccuracy in a Listing or in anything else supplied by a User;
5. the acts or omissions of any Agency, Owner or other User, including any failure to respond, any misrepresentation, and any fraud.
Listings are written by the Agency or Owner who publishes them. Kothi reviews Listings before they go live and removes what it finds to be wrong, but it does not inspect properties, does not verify title, ownership, boundaries, approvals, size or price, and makes no warranty about any of them. A Listing is an invitation to enquire, not a representation by Kothi. Before you pay anything to anyone — a token, a deposit, an advance, a fee — verify the title documents, the identity of the person you are dealing with and their authority to deal, and take independent legal advice. Kothi will never ask you to transfer money to secure a property.
The Platform is provided “as is” and “as available”. Kothi does not promise that it will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free or free of harmful code, and it may suspend, withdraw or restrict any part of the Platform for operational reasons at any time. Kothi is not liable for any interruption, or for any failure caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, including failures of telecommunications, power or third-party services.
Kothi does not warrant that the Platform is suitable for use outside Pakistan. Anyone using it from elsewhere does so on their own initiative and is responsible for complying with local law.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow to be excluded.
Where liability cannot be excluded, Kothi’s total liability to a User for everything arising in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees that User paid to Kothi in that period, or Rs 10,000 if the User paid nothing.

Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Kothi, and its owners, directors, employees, contractors and suppliers, against every claim, loss, liability, damage, cost and expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:
1. your use of the Platform, or your inability to use it;
2. your User Content, including any Listing you publish and any property you submit;
3. your breach of these terms or of any law;
4. your infringement of anyone’s rights, including Intellectual Property Rights and privacy;
5. if you are an Agency, any transaction, viewing, representation or dealing between you and a Customer or Owner, and any claim by a housing authority, society or regulator relating to your dealings in your Territory.
This indemnity survives the closing of your account and the ending of these terms.

Property listings

If you are an Agency

For every Listing you publish, you warrant that:
1. the property is genuinely available for sale or rent on the terms stated, and you have the owner’s current instruction to market it;
2. the price, size, location, condition, features and photographs are accurate and belong to that property;
3. the property is in your Territory and the Listing is in the correct property type and purpose;
4. where the property is in a project or scheme that requires approval or registration, that approval exists;
5. you hold every licence, registration or permission the law requires for the activity advertised, including for any sub-letting or short-term letting;
6. nothing in the Listing is Unacceptable, and it contains no statement about who may occupy the property that the law does not permit.
You must keep every Listing current: change the price when it changes, and mark the property sold or rented within three days of the deal. A Listing marked sold or rented stays visible as a price record — clearly labelled, without contact buttons — because a truthful record of what properties actually went for is part of what Kothi offers. You may not delete a Listing to hide a price.
Kothi may edit, decline, unpublish or remove any Listing at any time, for any reason, including to keep the Platform accurate, lawful and consistent. Fees are not refunded because a Listing is removed.

If you are an Owner

By submitting a property you warrant that you own it, or hold written authority from the owner to offer it, and that everything you tell us about it is true. If you are a tenant you warrant that your landlord has consented in writing to your offering the property.
Your submission is passed to the Authorised Agency for the property’s Area (or to Kothi where there is none), who will contact you, agree terms with you directly, and publish the Listing. Kothi is not a party to the agreement between you and the Agency and takes no fee from you or from the transaction.

If you are a Customer

Listings are supplied by Agencies and Owners, not by Kothi, and Kothi does not verify them. You must carry out your own due diligence and must not rely on a Listing alone. Reference numbers and price records on the Platform are aids to your enquiry, not valuations or advice.
The sizes shown on the Platform are converted between square feet, marla and kanal at the conventions stated on the Platform. Local practice varies; confirm the exact area from the title documents.

Enquiries and contact

To use Call or WhatsApp on a Listing, or to submit a property, you must sign in and verify a mobile number with a one-time code. This is deliberate: an Enquiry that carries a real number is one the Agency will actually answer, and it is what allows Kothi to hold Agencies to the two-hour response commitment.
When you make an Enquiry, your name and mobile number are shared with the Authorised Agency for that Listing (or with Kothi where Kothi is answering for it), together with which property you asked about. That is the purpose of the Enquiry and you consent to it. The Agency may use those details only to deal with you about that Enquiry — see section 5.
Kothi records the time, Listing and channel of every Enquiry. Those records are the basis on which Agencies are invoiced and on which their response times are measured. Kothi does not record the content of your calls or messages with an Agency; a call placed from the Platform is an ordinary call from your phone to theirs.
Where Kothi is answering for a Listing, contact is by WhatsApp. Messages to Kothi are answered in business hours, in the order they arrive.
An Agency must respond to every Enquiry within two hours during business hours, Monday to Saturday, and must not decline to deal with a Customer on the basis of religion, ethnicity, sex, disability or any other ground the law prohibits.
If you no longer wish to be contacted about an Enquiry, tell the Agency, and tell us at hello@kothi.pk if they do not stop.

Additional terms for agencies

If you are an Agency, or an officer, employee, agent or contractor of one, the following also apply to you.

The whole of the deal. These terms, the requirements and prices shown to you at application, and the invoices issued to you through the Console together form your agreement with Kothi. Kothi may issue written particulars for a specific Territory; where they conflict with these terms, the particulars govern for that Territory.
Staff. You may give your staff access to the Console. You are responsible for everything they do through it, and you must remove access the day someone leaves.
Customer data. Enquiries deliver Customers’ personal details to you. You must use them only to deal with the Enquiry, keep them secure, not disclose them to anyone else, not add them to any marketing list, and delete them when they are no longer needed for that Enquiry. You must comply with every law of Pakistan that applies to personal data and to electronic communications. A breach of this clause is grounds for immediate withdrawal of your Territory.
Photographs and video. You warrant that you own, or have the owner’s permission to use, every photograph and video you upload, that they show the property listed, and that no person is identifiable in them without consent. You grant Kothi the licence in section 2 for them. Kothi may compress, crop and watermark them, and may keep them in a Listing’s price record after the property is sold or rented.
Kothi’s brand. You may say that you are the authorised Kothi agency for the Areas you hold, in the form Kothi provides, for as long as you hold them. You may not use the Kothi name or mark in any other way, register any name, domain or handle containing it, or suggest that Kothi endorses your business beyond that authorisation.
Measurement. Kothi measures response times, Listing accuracy and Customer complaints for every Agency and may show an Agency its own figures. Kothi may use those measurements in deciding whether to renew, extend or withdraw authorisation.
Changes to the service. Kothi may change how the Platform and Console work at any time. Kothi will use reasonable efforts to notify Agencies of material changes through the Console or by email.
Liability cap. Subject to section 6, Kothi’s total liability to an Agency for everything arising from its Territory in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees the Agency paid to Kothi for that Territory in that period.
Ending. Either side may end the agreement on 30 days’ notice. Kothi may end it immediately for the causes in section 4. On ending, your Listings are removed, your number is taken off them, fees invoiced remain payable, and the clauses that are meant to survive — payment, customer data, indemnity, liability, and Kothi’s licence to the price record — survive.

General

These terms, the Privacy Policy and anything else they expressly incorporate are the entire agreement between you and Kothi about the Platform, and replace every earlier understanding. Neither side relies on any statement not set out in them, though nothing here limits liability for fraud.
Kothi may change these terms from time to time. The Effective Date at the top shows when they last changed. Kothi will give Agencies at least 30 days’ notice of a change that affects fees or Territory. Continuing to use the Platform after a change means you accept it; if you do not, stop using the Platform.
If any part of these terms is found invalid or unenforceable, it is treated as deleted and the rest continues in force.
Kothi may assign or subcontract any of its rights and obligations under these terms. You may not transfer yours — and an Agency may not transfer its Territory — without Kothi’s prior written consent.
Notices from Kothi may be given through the Console, by email to the address on your account, or by SMS to the number on it, and are treated as received 24 hours after sending. Keep those details current. Notices to Kothi go to hello@kothi.pk.
Kothi is not liable for any failure or delay caused by something beyond its reasonable control, including the acts of any government or authority.
If Kothi does not enforce a right or a clause on one occasion, it may still enforce it later.
Headings are for convenience and have no legal effect. If these terms are translated, the English text governs.
These terms are governed by the laws of Pakistan. The courts of Lahore have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except that Kothi may take action in any jurisdiction to protect its Intellectual Property Rights. Any claim you bring against Kothi must be started within one year of the events it is about.
These terms bind and benefit each side’s successors and permitted assigns.
Questions about these terms: hello@kothi.pk.