Buying
Booking an under-construction flat: what to establish first
7 min read · Last verified
In short
Before booking an under-construction flat, verify that the RERA registration covers your specific tower and phase, read the filed quarterly progress updates, check the developer's delivery record on completed projects, confirm the land title and approvals, and read the agreement's delay and force majeure clauses before paying anything substantial.
Key facts
- What you are buying
- A contractual promise, not an existing building
- Primary public record
- The project's RERA registration and filed updates
- Strongest single signal
- The developer's record on completed projects
- Most revealing document
- Filed quarterly progress updates
- Before large payment
- Independent title verification
Under-construction inventory dominates Navi Mumbai — across the nodes we list, ready-to-move projects are a small minority. For most buyers here, this is not a choice between ready and under construction; it is a question of how to assess under construction properly.
The checks below are ordered by how much they tell you relative to the effort involved.
Read the RERA registration properly
Not just confirm it exists. Open it and read it. The registration states the declared completion date, the sanctioned plan position and the extent of the registered phase.
Confirm the registration covers your specific tower. Large developments are registered phase by phase, and a marketing name can span several registrations with different timelines.
- Does the registration cover your tower and phase specifically?
- What completion date is declared, and does it match what you were told?
- Has the registration been extended, and how many times?
- Is the registration current rather than lapsed?
Read the filed progress updates — the most informative document available
Developers are required to file periodic progress updates. These are public, and the gap between the declared timeline and the filed progress is the single most useful signal a buyer can get for free.
A project whose updates have stopped being filed is telling you something. So is one whose reported progress has been flat across several filings.
Check the developer's record, not its brochure
The best predictor of whether a developer delivers on time is whether it has delivered on time before. That record is checkable.
Look at completed projects: were they finished close to the declared date? Did they receive occupancy certificates? Are the buildings maintained? Talking to residents of a completed project is worth more than any amount of marketing material.
- Find its completed projects and visit one.
- Compare declared and actual completion dates on past registrations.
- Check whether completed projects hold occupancy certificates.
- Ask residents about handover quality and how snags were dealt with.
Verify the land, because construction risk is not the only risk
A project can be built competently on land with a title problem. In Navi Mumbai the land category matters — CIDCO leasehold, freehold or gaothan — and it affects both the security of your purchase and whether lenders will finance it.
Commission a title search through your own lawyer before paying beyond a nominal amount.
Read the clauses that matter when it slips
Delay is common enough that the clauses governing it are not hypothetical.
- What compensation is payable for delay, and from what date does it run?
- How broadly is force majeure drafted? A wide clause can absorb the delay provision.
- What interest do you pay on a late instalment, and how does it compare?
- What are the cancellation terms if you need to exit?
Understand what you are paying, and when
A construction-linked schedule ties instalments to stages. Check how much is payable by structural completion and how much is held to handover — the latter is your leverage at the end.
Remember the parallel costs: pre-EMI interest through the construction period, and rent if you are paying it meanwhile.