Every state RERA portal is free, public, and searchable by project name. GujRERA, MahaRERA, all of them. The search takes about ten minutes. In over ten years of doing this, I've met exactly two buyers who ran it before paying a booking amount. This post is about someone who didn't — a client's cousin, who came to us in 2024 after the damage was done, hoping something could be salvaged.
The short version: a ₹54L 2BHK near Vaishnodevi Circle in Ahmedabad, booked in 2022. ₹5.4L at booking, then roughly ₹16L more across demand letters as “construction milestones” were claimed. By mid-2024 the site had been quiet for eight months. ₹21L in, no flat, no timeline. When we finally pulled up the project's GujRERA page together, everything that follows was already sitting there — and had been since before his first cheque.
Red flag one: the completion date on RERA wasn't the one in the brochure
The sales brochure said possession December 2023. The RERA registration — a legal declaration by the promoter, unlike a brochure — said December 2025. Two full years apart. That gap isn't a clerical quirk; it's the promoter telling the regulator the truth and telling buyers the pitch. When the dates differ, believe the RERA one, and then ask why the salesperson didn't.
Red flag two: the promoter's track record is listed. It was bad.
RERA registration requires promoters to disclose their past and ongoing projects. This promoter had an earlier project on the portal — delivered roughly three years late, with buyer complaints filed against it visible in the complaints section. Nobody mentions this at the sample flat. The regulator makes them publish it anyway, and it sits there unread.
Red flag three: the quarterly updates had stopped
Promoters must file quarterly progress updates on the portal — construction status, funds collected, approvals. This project's filings stopped about a year after launch, right around when the demand letters were still confidently arriving. A project that's collecting money but has gone silent with its regulator is telling you something in writing.
Red flag four — and this one's on the paperwork, not the portal
Under the RERA Act, a promoter can't take more than 10% of the property's cost before signing a registered agreement for sale. On a ₹54L flat, that's ₹5.4L. He'd paid ₹21L — nearly 40% — on an unregistered “booking-cum-allotment letter.” That's not a grey area; it's a violation, and it also stripped him of the protections a registered agreement carries. Any builder pushing past 10% before registration is telling you how they'll behave about everything else.
Where it stands, and what to actually do
He's now one of several buyers with a complaint before the authority — RERA does give real teeth here, including interest on delay and refund orders — but recovery against a stalled promoter is slow, and ₹21L has been dead money for two years while the case moves. Every rupee of that outcome was avoidable in 2022 for the cost of ten minutes and a project name typed into a search box. Before we let any client sign a booking form, the RERA pull is step one of our real estate review — registration validity, promoter history, declared completion date, filing recency, and the 10% rule on the payment schedule. It's the least glamorous thing we do and it has saved clients more money than any yield calculation ever has.
This is a general account of a real, anonymised case for educational purposes and isn't a substitute for legal advice on a specific project or agreement — RERA procedures and portal formats vary by state.