Reading a Karnataka RERA filing

A Karnataka RERA registration number tells you a project is on the register. It doesn’t tell you the project is sound. The filing behind the number does, if you know where to look, and most buyers never open it.

This is the order we read a filing in before a project reaches this site, and it is roughly the order in which things go wrong. A project that fails any one of these checks does not reach this site. Each section below has a real example.

1. Find the project from its number

Go to rera.karnataka.gov.in and search by registration number or project name. The record should show the same project name, the same promoter and the same address as the brochure. If a seller can’t give you a number at all, stop there: an apartment project of any real size has to be registered before it can be advertised or sold.

The number itself is worth reading. Here is DS-MAX Sky Fields’s, taken apart:

The six digits before the serial are the registration date: 251024 is 25 October 2024. If a brochure talks about a launch well before that date, ask why. The first block of codes says where the land is filed. On the filings we have read it is 1250 for land in Bengaluru Rural district and 1251 for Bengaluru Urban. Among those carrying 1250 are DS-MAX Sky Fields, Sowparnika Whispering Petals and Suvarna Homes, even where the brochure says Whitefield: the number says the land is in the next district.

One development can also carry more than one number. Surya Valencia is filed as two phases, each with its own registration, completion date and progress figure. Make sure the number on your paperwork is the one your unit sits under.

2. The litigation declaration

The filing asks the promoter to declare any litigation over the project or its land. It is a self-declaration made at registration: not a court search, and not a clean bill of health.

That cuts both ways. A declared case isn’t automatically fatal, but it needs a lawyer to read it before you pay anything. An undeclared case doesn’t show up here at all, which is why a title search is still worth the fee. On some older filings the field is simply blank; we treat that as unknown, not as clean.

Litigation declared on the filing is enough on its own for us to turn a project away.

3. The complaints register

Karnataka RERA keeps a register of the complaints buyers have filed against each project, open and disposed. It is a count, not a judgement. A complaint is one buyer’s allegation, and a disposed one may have gone either way.

Read it for the pattern rather than the verdict. Complaints are the most common reason we turn a project away. One carried 34 open complaints and 46 disposed ones. Our rule is none, open or closed. That is blunt, and a single complaint can be a single unreasonable buyer. But the register is the only place buyers’ experience of a promoter is recorded independently of the promoter, and we would rather miss a project than explain its complaints away.

Look at the promoter as well as the project. The register lists everything else a promoter has filed: the company behind DS-MAX Sky Fields, for instance, has 39 projects on the Karnataka register since 2018. Complaints on its other projects tell you how it behaves when things go wrong.

4. The quarterly progress report

Promoters update the filing every quarter with how far construction has got. It is the promoter’s own report, so treat it as their claim: a dated snapshot, not a live tracker and not an inspection.

Read the stage breakdown, not just the headline. The headline percentage is a weighted blend of stages, and foundations count for more than you might expect. DS-MAX Sky Fields filed 28% complete with the sub-structure finished and the super-structure not yet started: more than a quarter done, and nothing above ground. Vajram Vivera’s 19% was foundations past halfway, with the towers not started.

The date on the report matters as much as the number, which is why every figure on this site says when we read it. The report’s real use is against the possession date, which is the subject of our guide to what a possession date actually means.

5. Land title: owned or joint development

The filing records how the promoter holds the land: owned outright, or a joint development, where a landowner puts in the land, the developer builds, and the finished flats are split between them in an agreed ratio.

Joint developments are ordinary in Bangalore and not a red flag. Examples on this site include DSR The Courtyard, Miraya Woods by UKN, Udbhav Gokulam, Suvarna Homes, Vajram Chrysanthemum and Vajram Vivera. With a joint development, ask for two things: the registered agreement, and whose share your flat falls in, the developer’s or the landowner’s, because that is who you are paying. Our guide to buying in a joint development goes further.

Notice, too, when the field is missing. Sumadhura Capitol Residences doesn’t carry its land title on the public filing at all. The answer there is to ask for the title deed and the encumbrance certificate before anything else.

6. The occupancy certificate is not on the filing

The occupancy certificate, or OC, is issued by the planning authority once a building is finished and matches its sanctioned plan. It isn’t part of the RERA record, so a filing can’t tell you a building is ready to live in. Permanent utility connections, the khata in your name and the last tranche of most home loans usually depend on it, and once a building has its OC there is no GST on the purchase.

This is where marketing runs ahead of the register. A channel-partner page advertises DSR The Courtyard as ready to move in, with handover started. The filing shows it 88% complete against a February 2027 date. It may well be close. But “ready to move in” means an OC in hand, and the thing to ask for is the certificate itself, in writing.

7. Where filings go wrong

The filing is the document your agreement sits under, so it is the one to trust over a brochure. It isn’t infallible.

DS-MAX Sista Grand’s filing carries map coordinates that sit about 23 km north-west of the Uttarahalli address written on the same filing. The survey numbers, khata and ward are consistent, and they are what identify the land, so the site itself isn’t in question. But any “what’s nearby” list built from those coordinates describes the wrong side of the city.

More often the marketing disagrees with the filing, and the filing is right. Vajram Vivera is marketed as 343 homes of 3 and 4 BHK; the filing registers 375, including 32 one-bedroom units and no 4 BHK line. Sumadhura Capitol Residences markets 3 and 4 BHK only; its filing carries 41 one-bedroom and 13 two-bedroom units as well. Miraya Woods’ own project page has carried a statistics block — five acres, three towers, 346 units — that matches nothing on a filing of 72 units on 0.99 acres.

None of these is a reason on its own not to buy. All of them are reasons to read the filing yourself.

The short version

• The number resolves on rera.karnataka.gov.in to the same project, promoter and address.
• No litigation declared, and a blank field counts as unknown.
• The complaints register read for the pattern, on the promoter’s other projects too; our guide to checking a builder goes further.
• The progress report read by stage, with the date it was filed.
• The land title: owned or joint development, and if joint, whose share your flat is in.
• The OC: ask for the certificate, not the claim, and trust the filing over the brochure wherever they disagree.

Every project page on this site sets these out from its filing. The north Bangalore and east Bangalore pages summarise them across each side of the city: possession range, build progress and land title, project by project.