K-RERA for Apartment Buyers: The Complete Verification Guide
A K-RERA registration number tells you the promoter is accountable — it does not tell you the land under the tower is clean. This guide covers what to check on the K-RERA portal before booking, the rights the Act gives you, and the title diligence that must happen beyond RERA.
Quick answer
Before booking, check the project on rera.karnataka.gov.in — registration is mandatory for any project above 500 sq m of land or 8 units, and selling an unregistered qualifying project is illegal. Then verify what RERA does not cover: the project land's 30-year title chain, the JDA and landowner GPA, your undivided share of land (UDS), the conversion order, and the OC/CC at possession. RERA is a disclosure regime, not a title guarantee.
What K-RERA Actually Guarantees (and What It Does Not)
K-RERA guarantees disclosure and accountability from the promoter — it does not guarantee that the project land has clean title. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) is implemented in Karnataka by the Karnataka Real Estate Regulatory Authority (K-RERA), which runs the public portal at rera.karnataka.gov.in. Registration is mandatory for every project exceeding 500 square metres of land or more than eight units, and marketing, advertising, or selling units in an unregistered qualifying project is illegal.
Registration puts the promoter's own declarations on the public record: the approved plans and specifications, the declared possession date, litigation on the land, and quarterly progress updates. It also imposes financial discipline — the escrow, the carpet-area rule, the cap on advances — and gives you a forum in which to enforce all of it.
What registration means
The promoter has filed declarations with a regulator and is now accountable for them. Delays, deviations, and defaults carry statutory consequences — interest, refund, penalties — enforceable through complaints before the K-RERA authority.
What it does not mean
K-RERA does not investigate the project land's chain of title, does not certify construction quality, and does not audit the promoter's disclosures before publishing them. A registration number is an accountability hook, not a clearance.
Checking a Project on the K-RERA Portal
Search the project on rera.karnataka.gov.in before you pay even a token advance — every check below is free and takes minutes.
- Find the project. Use the registered-projects search by project name, promoter name, or registration number. If a qualifying project is being marketed but does not appear here at all, walk away — it is being sold illegally.
- Verify the registration number and validity. Match the number on the portal against the brochure and hoarding, and check the registration's validity period. A registration that lapses before the promised handover is a question the promoter must answer.
- Open the approved plans and specifications. This tab reveals what was actually sanctioned — towers, floors, unit count, amenities. Save a copy; it is your baseline for measuring deviations at possession.
- Note the declared possession date. This is the legally enforceable completion date, not the sales team's estimate. Delay interest is computed against this date.
- Read the quarterly progress updates. Promoters must upload updates every quarter. Stale or missing updates are a warning — either the project has stalled or the promoter's compliance has.
- Check the promoter's details and past projects. The promoter's other registrations reveal their delivery record. Chronic delays elsewhere rarely stay elsewhere.
- Review complaints, orders, and litigation disclosures. Orders passed against the project or promoter, and litigation declared on the land, are published on the portal. Read them before the site visit, not after.
Your Key Rights Under RERA
RERA gives an apartment buyer five concrete, enforceable rights: an escrow over your payments, sale on carpet area, a cap on advances, interest for delayed possession, and a five-year defect liability.
| Right | What the Act Provides | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| 70% escrow | The promoter must keep 70% of amounts collected from buyers in a separate, project-specific account, withdrawable only against construction and land cost certified by an engineer, an architect, and a chartered accountant | Your instalments fund your project — not the promoter's next land purchase |
| Carpet area | Units must be sold on carpet area — the net usable floor area as defined in the Act — not on super built-up area | Prices become comparable, and the area in your agreement is area you can actually walk on |
| 10% cap before agreement | The promoter cannot accept more than 10% of the cost of the flat without first executing a registered Agreement for Sale | Stops large booking amounts collected against nothing enforceable |
| Delay interest | If possession is delayed beyond the declared date, you may withdraw with a full refund plus interest, or continue and claim interest at the prescribed rate for every month of delay | The possession date on the portal has teeth |
| 5-year defect liability | Structural and workmanship defects reported within five years of possession must be rectified by the promoter at no further cost | The promoter stays on the hook long after handover |
The Title Layer RERA Does Not Verify
The project land's title — the mother deeds, the JDA, your undivided share, the conversion order — is the layer K-RERA never examines, and it is where apartment purchases actually go wrong. When you buy a flat you are buying two things: a constructed unit, and an undivided share of the land beneath it. RERA regulates the first; the second needs old-fashioned title diligence.
Mother deeds and the 30-year EC
The project land had owners long before the project. Ask for the mother deed (the earliest available parent deed), the subsequent chain of deeds, and a 30-year Encumbrance Certificate for the project land — not just for your flat. For land that was once agricultural, the revenue record (RTC, locally the pahani) shows who held it and how it was classified. Every deed in the chain must reconcile with the EC entries.
The JDA and the landowner's GPA
Most Bengaluru apartment land is developed under a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) between the landowner and the builder, backed by a General Power of Attorney (GPA) authorising the builder to deal with the land. Insist on copies of both. Then establish which stack your flat belongs to: JDAs split the built-up units into a landowner's share and a builder's share, and your seller must be the party entitled to sell your specific unit. A builder selling a flat from the landowner's allocation — or vice versa — without the paperwork to match is a title defect, not an administrative slip.
Your UDS arithmetic
Your sale deed conveys an undivided share of land (UDS) along with the flat. Two checks: first, that your deed states the UDS at all; second, that the UDS across all units adds up to no more than the total project land. Builders have oversold UDS — and when the arithmetic across deeds exceeds the land that exists, the later buyers hold paper rights to land that is not there.
The conversion order
Most apartment land in Karnataka began as agricultural land, which cannot lawfully be used for residential construction until it is converted to non-agricultural use under Section 95 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act. Ask for the conversion order (bhoo parivarthane) and check that it covers the survey numbers the project actually stands on. A missing conversion is a fundamental defect that no amount of RERA compliance cures.
Sanctioned plan vs what got built
The plan sanctioned by the planning authority — and disclosed on the K-RERA portal — is the yardstick; the building in front of you is the measurement. Extra floors, built-over setbacks, amenities converted into saleable units: deviations decide whether the building will ever receive an Occupancy Certificate, and in Bengaluru, whether your khata ends up an A-khata or a B-khata.
OC, CC and Khata at Possession
Three documents close out a compliant purchase: the Completion Certificate (CC), the Occupancy Certificate (OC), and the khata for your individual flat. The CC certifies that construction was completed in accordance with the sanctioned plan; the OC certifies that the building is fit for occupation. Take possession against the OC, not against a promise of one.
After your sale deed is registered, apply for the khata — the municipal account entry under which property tax is assessed — to be issued in your name for your specific unit. A building-level khata standing in the builder's name is not the end state: your flat needs its own khata, in your name, reflecting your UDS.
Resale Apartments: The Additional Checks
A resale flat needs everything above, plus three additions: the original allottee chain, the builder's NOC where applicable, and confirmation that association and maintenance dues are cleared.
Trace the chain from the builder's first sale down to your seller — every intermediate transfer should be a registered deed reflected in the EC. Where the builder or the owners' association requires a No Objection Certificate for transfer, obtain it before registration, not after. Ask the association for a dues-clearance letter: in practice, maintenance arrears travel with the flat. The project's K-RERA record still matters as context — orders and complaints against the promoter affect the building you are moving into — but for a resale purchase, your protection comes from the title file, not from RERA.
Common Traps
Four traps account for most apartment-purchase grief in Karnataka.
Registration is a disclosure regime, not a title guarantee or a quality certification. Treat the registration number as the beginning of diligence — the licence to start asking questions — never as the conclusion.
Marketing or selling a qualifying project before registration is illegal, and money handed over at "pre-launch prices" sits outside RERA's escrow discipline. If the project is not on the portal yet, your cheque is early — dangerously so, not advantageously.
Where construction deviates materially from the sanctioned plan, the OC may never be issued. In Bengaluru that typically pushes the property towards a B-khata, complicating bank finance and resale for every owner in the building.
When the undivided shares written across all the project's sale deeds add up to more than the land itself, the shortfall lands on the buyers — usually the later ones. Check the arithmetic before you become part of it.
How DeedSure Verifies Apartment Documents
DeedSure verifies the document layer of an apartment purchase: the project-land chain of title, the EC cross-reference, the presence and consistency of the JDA and GPA, the UDS arithmetic across deeds, the conversion order, and the khata.
Document ingestion: Upload the mother deeds, the project-land EC, the JDA and GPA, the conversion order, your sale deed or agreement, and the khata. DeedSure classifies each document by type automatically.
Structured extraction: Every field — parties, survey numbers, extents, UDS, dates — is extracted with a confidence score, and low-confidence fields are routed for human review.
Chain reconstruction: The project land's ownership history is rebuilt as a graph and cross-referenced against the EC, entry by entry.
Anomaly detection: 23 anomaly rules run across the file — missing conversion, absent JDA or GPA, UDS totals exceeding the project land, khata mismatches, and more — each finding classified by severity with a plain-language explanation.
Risk scoring and reporting: Findings feed a 5-dimension risk score, and you receive a Title Intelligence Report in 15–30 minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check if a project is RERA registered in Karnataka?
Search the project name, promoter name, or registration number on rera.karnataka.gov.in under the registered-projects search. Confirm that the registration number matches the brochure, that the registration is still valid, and that the declared possession date and approved plans match what the sales team is promising. Registration is mandatory for any project exceeding 500 square metres of land or more than 8 units, and selling an unregistered qualifying project is illegal.
Is RERA registration proof of clear title?
No. RERA is a disclosure regime — K-RERA publishes what the promoter declares and holds the promoter accountable for it, but it does not certify the project land's chain of title. You must separately verify the mother deeds, a 30-year Encumbrance Certificate for the project land, the JDA and landowner GPA, the conversion order, and the undivided share of land conveyed with your flat.
What is UDS and why does it matter?
UDS (undivided share of land) is the fraction of the project land conveyed to you along with your flat. The building depreciates; the UDS is the land right that endures. The UDS stated across all sale deeds in the project must add up to no more than the total project land — if a builder has oversold UDS, later buyers hold paper rights to land that does not exist.
What happens if the builder delays possession?
Under RERA, if the promoter fails to hand over possession by the date declared at registration, you may either withdraw from the project and claim a full refund with interest, or continue with the purchase and claim interest at the prescribed rate for every month of delay. Complaints are filed before the K-RERA authority.
Can a builder sell without an Occupancy Certificate?
Builders do hand over flats without an OC, but a building occupied without one is irregular — and in Bengaluru, deviation-heavy buildings that never receive an OC typically end up on B-khata, which complicates bank loans and resale for every owner. Insist on the OC and Completion Certificate at handover and treat their absence as a serious risk, not a formality.
Do resale flats need RERA checks?
Partly. RERA primarily governs sales by the promoter in new projects, so for a resale flat the K-RERA record is context rather than your main protection. You must verify the original allottee chain from the builder to your seller, obtain the builder or association NOC where applicable, confirm that maintenance dues are cleared, and run the full project-land title checks — mother deeds, EC, JDA, UDS, conversion, and khata.
Related Reading
Property Due Diligence Checklist
The complete 10-step verification framework for Karnataka property purchases.
A-Khata vs B-Khata
Why deviation-heavy buildings without an OC end up on B-khata in Bengaluru.
Glossary: K-RERA
Quick-reference definition of Karnataka's real estate regulator.
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