Real estate developers in Maharashtra can advertise completed projects without citing RERA registration number. Here’s how

IT companies are seeing a slowdown in hiring over the past few quarters and there is a decline in number of employees, which has led to a lower occupancy levels in office space

Real estate developers in Mumbai can advertise their projects without mentioning their registration number with the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), provided their projects are completed and have received an occupation certificate (OC), says an order issued by Maharashtra RERA (MahaRERA)

MahaRERA in a suo motu case against a real estate developer from Pune, has held that since the project is already completed and an OC has been received, the developer is not in violation of the RERA Act for having advertised its project without the RERA registration number.

The case

A Pune-based developer published an advertisement for his project in leading newspapers in the city on April 1, 2023. Following this, on April 6, 2023, MahaRERA issued a show-cause notice to the developer for having published the advertisement without mentioning the RERA registration number.

Replying to the notice of MahaRERA on April 17, 2023, the developer said that the project was completed in September 2020 and that both completion and OC were issued to the project. Due to typographical and clerical errors, the concerned advertising person missed mentioning the RERA registration number in the advertisement, the developer said.

Related stories

Mehul R Thakkar

Special Correspondent|Moneycontrol

• 
  New players have entered Mumbai real estate market and we welcome their presence: Abhishek Lodha
• 
  Mumbai real estate market records 9% rise in property registrations this month
• 
  MahaRERA tells developers to declare parking space details to homebuyers

Also read: Almost 36% real-estate projects from pre-RERA era have disputes, compared to 3% now: MahaRERA

What does the RERA Act say?

According to Section 11(2) of the RERA Act, any advertisement or prospectus published by a developer should mention the RERA registration number along with the website address of the authority.

Also read: MahaRERA may suspend registration of over 500 projects for non-compliance

And RERA said…

In the order dated April 26, 2023, MahaRERA ruled, "From a plain reading of the RERA Act, the developer is under obligation to mention the RERA registration number in the advertisements. However, since in this case the developer has already obtained the OC for the project before the advertisement was published, the developer is not in violation of Section 11(2) of the RERA Act.