When the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, RERA, came into force in 2016, most of the early conversation was about new residential projects and homebuyer protection against delayed possession. What gets discussed far less, but matters enormously to the thousands of housing societies undertaking redevelopment across Mumbai, is how RERA applies to redevelopment projects specifically, and what existing members should insist on before signing away their old flats.
The first point of confusion I regularly encounter is whether redevelopment projects need to register with RERA (MahaRERA, in Maharashtra) at all, given that existing members are not “buying” a new flat in the conventional sense but receiving a replacement for the one they are giving up. The answer, in most cases, is yes. Under the RERA Act, any real estate project where the land area exceeds 500 square metres, or where more than eight apartments are proposed to be constructed, whichever threshold is lower, must be registered with the relevant state authority, and this applies regardless of whether the flats are being sold to new buyers or handed back to existing society members as part of a redevelopment scheme. In practice, this covers the vast majority of Mumbai housing society redevelopment projects, since even a modest four or five storey older building on a reasonably sized plot typically has both more than eight units and a plot exceeding 500 square metres once you factor in the new construction.
Why should an existing member of a redevelopment society care whether the project is RERA-registered? Because RERA registration brings with it a set of protections that a private Development Agreement alone does not reliably guarantee. A RERA-registered project must disclose the sanctioned plans, the promised completion date, and details of the developer’s track record on the MahaRERA website, publicly accessible to any member who wants to verify claims independently rather than relying solely on what the developer’s representative tells the society. The developer is legally required to deposit 70 percent of the funds collected from the sale of the free sale component into a separate escrow account, to be used only for the construction and land costs of that specific project, a rule designed specifically to prevent developers from diverting funds from one project to plug a shortfall in another, historically a major cause of stalled projects in Mumbai.
Perhaps most importantly for redevelopment, RERA gives existing members, alongside external flat buyers, a formal legal remedy if the promised possession date is missed. Under Section 18 of the Act, if a developer fails to deliver possession by the date committed in the RERA registration, allottees (which includes existing society members receiving replacement flats) are entitled to either withdraw from the project and receive a full refund with interest, or continue in the project and receive interest for every month of delay until possession is finally handed over. Before RERA, a delayed redevelopment project often left society members with little recourse beyond prolonged and expensive civil litigation; today, a properly filed complaint with MahaRERA is a considerably faster and more accessible route to compensation for delay.
This is precisely why I tell every society considering redevelopment, regardless of whether they choose a builder or self-redevelop, to insist that the project be registered with MahaRERA before construction begins, and to independently verify this registration on the MahaRERA website rather than accepting a registration certificate shown to them at a meeting at face value. It takes only a few minutes to search a project by name or registration number on the portal and confirm the details match what has been presented to the society.
A few practical RERA-related checks every redevelopment society should build into its process. First, confirm the promised possession date stated in the RERA registration matches what was verbally committed to the society; developers occasionally register a project with a longer timeline than what they tell the society in meetings, precisely to build in a buffer against penalty. Second, check whether the developer’s other RERA-registered projects, particularly ones nearing or past their committed completion date, have actually been delivered on time; a pattern of delayed projects elsewhere is a meaningful red flag regardless of how attractive the current offer looks. Third, ensure the Permanent Alternate Accommodation Agreement (PAAA) signed with each member explicitly references the RERA registration number and cross-refers to the RERA-mandated timelines and penalty provisions, rather than existing as a document entirely separate from the RERA framework.
It is also worth knowing that self-redevelopment projects are equally subject to RERA registration requirements once they cross the size thresholds mentioned earlier, a fact some self-redevelopment consultants do not emphasise strongly enough, perhaps because the society, acting as its own developer, may not be used to thinking of itself as a regulated real estate promoter under the Act. Societies going the self-redevelopment route should register the project just as diligently as they would expect any external builder to, both for legal compliance and because it is genuinely useful discipline for tracking and communicating the project’s own progress against a public benchmark.
RERA is not a guarantee against every possible redevelopment headache; disputes over flat sizes, quality of construction, and internal society disagreements fall largely outside its scope. But on the specific and historically painful problem of open-ended delays with no accountability, it has meaningfully shifted the balance of power toward flat owners and society members, provided they know to insist on registration and understand how to use the protections it offers.
One final, often overlooked point: RERA registrations need to be renewed or extended if a project genuinely requires more time, and a society should ask to see any such extension filings rather than simply noticing, with alarm, that the original promised date has quietly passed. A developer who proactively files for and is granted a legitimate extension, with valid reasons on record, behaves very differently from one who simply lets the original date lapse without any formal update. Making it a standing agenda item at every redevelopment sub-committee meeting to check the project’s current RERA status online costs the committee almost nothing in time, and it is one of the simplest habits a society can build to stay ahead of problems rather than discovering them only once possession is badly overdue.
