MahaRERA Agent common mistakes
MahaRERA Agent · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When computing the price/area of an apartment the candidate uses built-up or saleable area, or adds back the full balcony and verandah area, instead of using 'carpet area' as defined in the Act.
The habit comes from decades of Maharashtra practice where builders sold on 'built-up' and 'super built-up' area, and marketing material still quotes those numbers; the Act's narrower definition is easily skipped as a technicality.
What to do instead
Memorise Section 2(k): carpet area is the net usable floor area within the apartment excluding the area covered by external walls, areas under service shafts, exclusive balcony/verandah (counted at 50% where it is exclusive) and open terrace (counted at 50% where it is exclusive of the apartment). Practise converting one saleable-area figure into carpet area so the arithmetic is automatic.
States the rate of interest payable by a promoter for delayed possession (or payable by an allottee for delayed payment) as 'the RBI repo rate plus 2%', '18% p.a.' or '10% p.a.' instead of the statutory formula.
Candidates remember that both sides must be treated equally and that some benchmark plus a margin applies, but they substitute the more familiar repo rate for the benchmark the Act actually names.
What to do instead
Drill the Section 2(za) definition: interest rate means the State Bank of India's highest Marginal Cost of Lending Rate plus 2%, and the same rate applies to promoter and allottee alike unless a lower rate is agreed. Tie it to Section 18 (refund/delay) and Rule 18 of the Maharashtra Rules for monthly compounding of delayed instalments.
Uses the wrong trigger threshold for project registration - answers '1,000 sq m' or 'more than 4 apartments' - and tells the client that projects launched before 1 May 2017 have no registration duty at all.
The 500 sq m figure is often remembered as '500 square yards', and the retrospective treatment of ongoing projects is counter-intuitive because candidates assume a statute never looks backwards.
What to do instead
Fix the two trigger tests in Section 3: land area exceeding 500 sq m OR more than 8 apartments (either alone obliges registration), plus phased projects. Then fix the date logic: ongoing projects that had not received completion/occupancy certificate on 1 May 2017 had to register by 31 July 2017, with the promoter depositing 70% of unutilised amounts in a separate escrow account.
Tells the promoter that 70% of the total project cost (or 70% of the estimated cost, or 70% of the sanctioned loan) must be parked in the separate account, and that withdrawal is allowed at any time for any project expense.
The figure 70% is remembered but the base to which it applies is not; candidates also carry over the common misconception that the whole project budget is locked, which makes the rule sound unworkable and therefore easily mis-stated.
What to do instead
Anchor the base: 70% of the amounts realised from allottees for the project, deposited in a separate scheduled-bank account, withdrawn only after it is certified by a practising chartered accountant/engineer that withdrawal is in proportion to the percentage of completion of the project, and after covering the cost of land and construction. The promoter's own equity is not part of the 70% computation.
Answers that a real estate agent's registration is valid for 3 years (or 1 year, renewed annually) and advises the client to reapply at that point.
Other licences and enrolments in Indian practice typically run for one or three years, and the candidate substitutes the familiar period for the statutory one.
What to do instead
Memorise Section 9: agent registration, once granted, is valid for 5 years and may be renewed. Note the consequence of lapsing - the agent cannot lawfully facilitate any transaction until renewal is granted, and continued dealing on a lapsed registration is a contravention attracting the daily penalty.
Advises the agent to obtain a separate registration for each district, city or branch office, or to register again in Maharashtra if already registered in another State.
Registration under other Indian regulatory regimes (shops and establishments, GST, labour licences) is location-specific, so candidates import that assumption into RERA.
What to do instead
State the rule plainly: the Authority grants a single registration to a real estate agent, valid for the entire State of Maharashtra, and it is not divisible by district or office. A fresh registration in Maharashtra is required for an agent registered elsewhere; a separate registration within Maharashtra is needed only for a distinct legal entity, not for a new branch of the same entity.
Advises that the agent can keep brokering while a renewal application is pending, and that any change in the agent's address, partners or business particulars can be reported at the next renewal instead of immediately.
Businesses routinely treat licence renewals as administrative housekeeping that does not interrupt trading, and changes in particulars feel too minor to report.
What to do instead
Treat expiry as a hard stop: file the renewal application well before expiry (MahaRERA's prescribed lead time is 60 days before the date of expiry) and cease all facilitation if the registration has lapsed. Report every change in the particulars of the registration (address, constitution of the firm, partners/directors, place of business) to MahaRERA within the prescribed 30-day window, using the prescribed intimation form.
Names the wrong document in procedural answers - calls for a generic 'registration form', or cites Form 'B' for a project and Form 'A' for an agent, and mixes up the fee/annexure schedule for each application.
The central Act is silent on forms, so candidates skim the Maharashtra Rules and carry over a half-remembered form letter; the two applications look structurally similar.
What to do instead
Learn the Maharashtra Rules schedule as a pair: Form 'A' is the promoter's application for registration of a real estate project, Form 'B' is the real estate agent's application for registration, and each has its own fee and document list (PAN, ITR, photographs, details of past projects/offences). Whenever a question asks which form or which annexure, answer from the schedule rather than from the Act.
Sends an aggrieved party to the High Court or back to MahaRERA for a second review, and, when the Appellate Tribunal is named, states a 30-day appeal window with no pre-deposit.
Appeal periods under many statutes are 30 days and no-deposit, and the Authority/Tribunal hierarchy is easy to flatten when the candidate is under time pressure.
What to do instead
Fix the ladder: complaint or adjudication before MahaRERA (Section 31), appeal to the Maharashtra Real Estate Appellate Tribunal (Section 43) within 60 days of the order, with the Tribunal empowered to condone further delay; the appellant must pre-deposit 30% of the penalty/interest/compensation before the appeal is entertained. Civil courts are barred by Section 79.
Quotes a single 'RERA fine' for every breach - for example saying an unregistered promoter and an unregistered agent both pay 10% of project cost, or that MahaRERA itself can send the promoter to jail.
The penalty provisions sit in one cluster of sections with different bases (percentage of estimated cost vs. daily amount capped at a percentage), and candidates collapse them into one headline number; the word 'punishment' in the Act is also misread as a power of the Authority.
What to do instead
Build a short table and learn it by base: failure to register the project - up to 10% of estimated project cost (Section 59); other promoter contraventions - ₹10,000 per day or 1% of estimated cost, whichever is less (Section 60); failure to comply with an Authority order - up to 5% of estimated cost (Section 61); agent's failure to register - ₹10,000 per day or 1% of the cost of the project/property, whichever is less (Section 62). Keep separate the point that MahaRERA is not a criminal court: imprisonment and fines under the offence provisions are imposed by a Magistrate, and MahaRERA's own sanctions are penalties, interest, compensation, deregistration and directions.