A builder will show you a parking spot before you book, and a number in a letter after you pay. Between those two moments, a lot rides on one question the brochure never answers: is this space something you own, or something you are merely allowed to use? The law draws that line sharply, and it does not always match what a sales team implies.
This guide works through what “parking” actually means under Karnataka’s real estate law: the statutory difference between a garage and open parking, a Supreme Court case that still shapes how builders write their agreements, how Karnataka’s own rules treat a parking allotment, how many car parks a building must provide, and what to check before you sign for one.
What you are actually buying
The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 defines two things that matter here, and they are not the same thing. First, “common areas”, which every allottee owns a share of along with everyone else in the project, includes parking of one kind by name:
“‘common areas’ mean— ... (iii) the common basements, terraces, parks, play areas, open parking areas and common storage spaces ... (viii) all other portion of the project necessary or convenient for its maintenance, safety, etc., and in common use.”
Second, a “garage”, which is not a common area and can be sold to you individually, with its own price:
“‘garage’ means a place within a project having a roof and walls on three sides for parking any vehicle, but does not include an unenclosed or uncovered parking space such as open parking areas.”
Read together, the two definitions do the same job from opposite ends. Anything with a roof and walls on at least three sides is a garage: the builder may sell it to you, separately from the flat, at its own price. Anything without that – a painted rectangle in the open, a spot under a car porch with no walls, a stretch of the compound kept clear for cars – is an “open parking area”, which the Act puts inside common areas. A builder can allot you the use of one, but cannot sell you title to it the way it sells you the flat, because it is not the builder’s alone to sell: every allottee in the project owns an undivided share of it.
This is not a technicality. It decides whether the space is yours to keep, transfer or exclude others from, or whether it is something the association of allottees will eventually control on behalf of everyone, you included.
Covered slot or open space
The practical difference shows up at resale, at a dispute with your association, and in how the space is priced in the first place.
Individually sellable, with its own line and price in the agreement. It can carry its own number, and in Karnataka’s model agreement it is tied to your flat as a single unit once bought together. You can, in principle, exclude someone else from it, the way you can your flat.
An “open parking area” under the Act. A builder can tell you which spot to use, and that allocation can be reasonable and lasting, but the underlying space stays part of the common areas that every allottee owns a share of, and it passes to the association along with everything else common when the project is handed over.
Ask directly which one you are being shown, and get the answer in writing rather than inferring it from a brochure render. A car porch with a roof but open sides, a common practice in Bengaluru, is the sort of space where builders and buyers genuinely talk past each other on this point.
What a 2010 case settled
The definitions above did not exist when a Mumbai promoter and a housing society fought over 25 stilt parking spaces, in a case the Supreme Court decided on 31 August 2010: Nahalchand Laloochand Pvt. Ltd. v Panchali Co-operative Housing Society Ltd. The promoter had sold stilt parking spaces separately, on top of the flats, and argued this was within its rights. The Court disagreed, and its reasoning is worth knowing because of what it settled and what it did not.
The case turned on Maharashtra’s Ownership Flats Act, 1963 (MOFA), which let a “flat” include a garage but did not define what a garage was. The Court held that a garage “must be considered as would be understood by a flat purchaser and such person would contemplate garage which has a roof and wall on three sides”, and that stilt parking – open on all sides, with only columns and a floor above – did not qualify. Its conclusion:
“Stilt parking space/s being part of ‘common areas’ of the building developed by the promoter, the only right that the promoter has, is to charge the cost thereof in proportion to the carpet area of the flat from each flat purchaser. Such stilt parking space being neither ‘flat’ ... nor ‘garage’ ... is not sellable at all.”
Two things about this case matter for a Bengaluru buyer. First, it was decided under Maharashtra’s own Act, which Karnataka was never subject to; it settles nothing here directly, and no Karnataka court is bound by it. Second, and more useful: the “roof and walls on three sides” test the Court worked out for MOFA’s undefined word “garage” is, almost word for word, what Parliament later wrote into section 2(y) of the national RERA Act. The specific Mumbai judgment does not bind Karnataka, but the definition it reasoned its way to now applies here anyway, because it is the law Parliament enacted for every state, Karnataka included.
Karnataka’s own rules
Two Karnataka instruments put the same principle into the paperwork you actually sign.
Every registered agreement for sale in the state has to follow Annexure-A, the model agreement under the Karnataka RERA rules. It treats a garage or covered slot as something allotted and described like the flat itself, not as an afterthought:
“...has been allotted apartment no. ___ ... along with garage/covered parking no. ___ admeasuring ___ square feet in the ___ [location], as permissible under the applicable law and of pro rata share in the common areas (‘Common Areas’) as defined under clause (n) of Section 2 of the Act...”
Note the two things sitting side by side: a garage or covered slot with its own number and area, and, separately, your pro-rata share of the common areas, expressly cross-referenced to the same section 2(n) that lists open parking as common property. The model agreement also makes the two purchases, flat and parking, a package once bought together: “the [Apartment/Plot] along with ___ garage/covered parking shall be treated as a single indivisible unit for all purposes” (para 1.9). You cannot sell the flat and keep the garage, or the other way round, once the agreement is signed on those terms.
The Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act, 1972 – still the law governing the deed of declaration for most Bengaluru apartment buildings, though a new state apartment law passed the legislature in August 2026 and is not yet in force – takes the common-areas side of this further. Its own definition folds parking straight into the default common pool: “common areas and facilities” means, unless the Declaration says otherwise, “the basements, cellars, yards, gardens, parking areas and storage spaces” among other things. The Act does give a Declaration a way to carve out exclusive use: a “limited common area” is common area “reserved for use of certain apartment or apartments to the exclusion of the other apartments”. That is the mechanism by which a specific covered slot ends up earmarked for your flat alone, even though, structurally, it remains part of the building’s common property rather than something you hold a separate title to the way you would a garage.
How many car parks, by rule
Bengaluru’s zoning regulations set out how many car parks a residential building must provide, in Table 23 of the Zonal Regulations of the Revised Master Plan-2015. For apartments, the requirement runs by the size of each flat, not a flat count for the whole building:
| Dwelling unit | Car parks required |
|---|---|
| More than 50 up to 150 sq m floor area | 1 car park; an additional part-space where the unit is more than 50% into the next size band |
| Under 50 sq m floor area | 1 car park for every 2 dwelling units |
| On top of the above | 10% more, reserved for visitor parking |
| Every car parking space | At least 2.5 m × 5.5 m |
That 10% visitor allowance is not a courtesy the builder extends; it is a line in the same table as your own flat’s requirement. If you are struggling to find guest parking in a finished building, the sanctioned plan is the place to check whether it was ever provided.
The zoning regulations also allow parking on a stilt or basement floor, and, since a further amendment took effect on 5 January 2026, mechanised or hydraulic parking systems – a car lift lowering vehicles into stacked pits – without a ramp, on plots up to 6,000 sq m. Where that is used, each parking pit must still measure at least 3.0 m by 5.5 m, and fire safety for the arrangement has to follow the National Building Code. If your building uses one of these systems, ask how it is meant to work when the power is out, since the same regulation requires a manual back-up but does not require the builder to demonstrate it to you.
EV charging
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs amended its Model Building Bye-Laws, 2016 in 2019 to add a section on electric vehicle charging: charging infrastructure is to be provided for 20% of a building’s parking capacity, for every building type except independent houses. That is a central, model provision, meant as a template for states and cities to adopt into their own building rules; on its own it binds no one.
We could not confirm, in Bengaluru’s own zoning regulations or building bye-laws as they stand on 10 Sep 2026, that this 20% figure, or any other specific EV-charging requirement, has been separately notified for apartment buildings here. If EV charging matters to you, ask the builder directly what proportion of the parking is wired for it, and get the answer, and the specific slots, named in your agreement rather than promised verbally.
What your papers should say
Whatever you are allotted, get it described precisely, and check it against the sanctioned plan rather than taking the builder’s letter alone. A real allotment letter varies by builder; the specimen below shows what Karnataka’s model agreement expects such details to cover.
[Builder letterhead] 1 · To: A. Buyer, Flat No. 604, Tower B 2
Sub: Allotment of car parking – [Project name]
Dear Allottee, further to your agreement for sale dated __, we confirm allotment of the following parking space against your apartment:
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Parking slot no. | B-014 3 |
| Type | Covered (garage) 4 |
| Dimensions | 2.5 m × 5.5 m 5 |
| Location | Basement 1, Block B, col. B-12 6 |
This parking space forms a single, indivisible unit with Apartment No. 604 and shall not be sold, let or transferred separately from it. 7
- Whose letter it is. It should reference your actual signed agreement for sale, not just a booking application.
- Your name and unit. Check it matches your agreement exactly, including the tower or block.
- A slot number. It should match the numbering on the building’s sanctioned or approved parking layout, not only an internal sales code that changes if the builder reallocates spaces.
- Covered or open, stated plainly. “Garage” or “covered” should mean a roofed space walled on three sides, per section 2(y) of the RERA Act. If what you are shown is open on more than one side, ask that the letter say so.
- Dimensions. Compare them to the zoning minimum of 2.5 m by 5.5 m, so you know before you buy a car whether the space will actually take it.
- Location on the plan. A floor and a landmark or grid reference, so you can find the space and confirm it is not sitting in a fire access lane or inside the visitor share.
- The single-unit clause. From Karnataka’s model agreement: once bought together, the flat and the parking cannot be sold apart later. That matters when you come to resell, and it is worth knowing before you buy, not after.
Disputes with the association
Two rules decide who you are actually arguing with, and when.
Before handover, the promoter is responsible for the common areas, including any open parking. The RERA Act sets a deadline for this to change: the promoter must execute a registered conveyance deed transferring the undivided title in the common areas to the association of allottees, and, absent a local law saying otherwise, do so within three months of the occupancy certificate being issued. After that, the common areas – open parking among them – are legally the association’s, held on behalf of every member.
Once the association exists, day-to-day decisions about common-area parking – how visitor spaces are managed, whether a “limited common” slot can be reassigned, how a shortage is handled – are governed by its own bye-laws. Under the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act, those bye-laws must set out “the method of adopting and of amending administrative rules and regulations governing the details of the operation and use of the common areas and facilities”, and no amendment to them is valid unless it is recorded as an amendment to the Declaration itself and filed with the competent authority. If your association changes how parking is allocated and you think it was done informally, at a meeting without the right notice or quorum, or without updating the Declaration, that procedural failure is itself a ground to challenge the change, separately from whether the new arrangement is fair.
What a dispute is actually about also matters for where you take it. A disagreement over what the builder promised or sold you, before handover, is a promoter dispute and belongs with Karnataka RERA, the same as any other complaint about the agreement for sale. A disagreement with your own association after handover, about how common parking is run, is an internal governance matter under the bye-laws first, and a civil dispute only if that fails. Keep the allotment letter and the agreement’s price break-up for both: they are what tie a specific space to your purchase, whichever route you end up needing.
Before you sign for parking
- Get it named: garage or open, in writing, using the words the RERA Act uses.
- Get a slot number, dimensions and a location on the plan, not just a verbal assurance.
- Check the price break-up shows the parking as its own line, separate from the flat.
- Ask what proportion of parking is visitor space, and whether it matches the 10% zoning sets aside.
- Ask directly about EV charging if it matters to you; do not assume it is included.
- Keep the allotment letter with your agreement; it is your evidence of what was promised.
- After handover, read your association’s bye-laws before you accept any change to how parking is allocated.
Sources, checked 10 Sep 2026. “Common areas” and “garage”, and the transfer of title to the association within three months of the occupancy certificate: Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, sections 2(n), 2(y) and 17 (rera.karnataka.gov.in). Nahalchand Laloochand Pvt. Ltd. v Panchali Co-operative Housing Society Ltd., Supreme Court of India, 31 August 2010 (AIR 2010 SC 3607; (2010) 9 SCC 536) (indiankanoon.org). The garage/covered-parking allotment fields and the single-indivisible-unit clause: Annexure-A, the model agreement for sale under rule 8A of the Karnataka Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017, recital G and para 1.9. Common areas, limited common areas, and bye-laws governing their use: Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act, 1972, sections 3(f), 3(m) and 16 (dpal.karnataka.gov.in). Car parking and visitor parking requirements, and mechanised parking: Zonal Regulations of the Revised Master Plan-2015 of the Local Planning Area of Bengaluru, Table 23 and regulation 3.9(x), the latter inserted by Notification No. UDD 235 MNJ 2025(E), Government of Karnataka, dated 5 January 2026 (indiacode.nic.in). The central EV charging provision: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Model Building Bye-Laws 2016, chapter 10.4, as reported in NITI Aayog’s Handbook of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Implementation (niti.gov.in).
This is a general guide, not legal advice. Where a specific allotment, agreement clause or association dispute is in question, read the underlying documents yourself and, if in doubt, consult a lawyer.