RERA Buyer Rights Guide India 2026 — Know Your Rights & File a Complaint

Before you sign: which projects must register, and the 10% cap on advances

Not every project is legally required to carry a RERA registration. Section 3(2)(a) of the Act exempts a project where "the area of land proposed to be developed does not exceed five hundred square meters or the number of apartments proposed to be developed does not exceed eight inclusive of all phases" — a small standalone building can be entirely outside RERA's registration requirement, which means the Section 18 delay-interest remedy this page describes does not automatically apply to it either. Check the project's RERA registration number on your state's RERA portal before assuming any of the rights on this page apply to your purchase.

Separately, Section 13(1) limits what a builder can legally collect from you before you have a signed, registered agreement: a promoter "shall not accept a sum more than ten per cent of the cost of the apartment, plot, or building...as an advance payment or an application fee, from a person without first entering into a written agreement for sale". If a builder asked for a booking amount above 10% of the announced price before you signed anything, that collection itself breaches Section 13 — a separate, provable violation you can raise alongside any later delay complaint, not something you have to accept as normal industry practice.

Section 19 cuts both ways — it is not only a buyer entitlement

The existing table above lists Section 19 as a document-access right, which is correct but incomplete. The same section entitles an allottee to sanctioned-plan information and stage-wise completion schedules, and — critically for a delay dispute — states plainly that a withdrawing allottee "shall be entitled to claim the refund of amount paid along with interest at such rate as may be prescribed and compensation in the manner as provided under this Act". But Section 19 also fixes obligations on the buyer's side: timely payment of instalments and your own share of registration, municipal and maintenance charges. A RERA complaint against a builder is weaker if the buyer's own Section 19 payment obligations were not met on schedule — an adjudicating officer will look at both sides' compliance, not just the builder's.

Real estate agents: RERA-registered, but not commission-capped

If your complaint involves a broker rather than the builder directly, the Act's Section 9 requires any real estate agent to obtain state RERA registration before facilitating a sale — "No real estate agent shall facilitate the sale or purchase of or act on behalf of any person to facilitate the sale or purchase of any plot, apartment or building...without obtaining registration under this section". What Sections 9 and 10 do not do is prescribe or cap a brokerage percentage anywhere in the Act — commission is not addressed by RERA at all. A '2% is the standard rate' figure you may see quoted is, at best, an industry convention reported by a trade body, never a RERA-mandated ceiling; do not cite RERA as the authority for what an agent is entitled to charge.

The delay-interest rate: confirmed state by state, not one national figure

The Act itself sets no interest percentage — Section 18 says only that the promoter pays interest "at such rate as may be prescribed", leaving the actual number to each state's own Rules. Three states' Rules were verified for this guide against the identical formula, State Bank of India's highest Marginal Cost of Lending Rate plus two percent: Telangana — "shall be highest Marginal Cost of Lending Rate of State Bank of India plus two per cent" — Karnataka — "shall be the State Bank of India highest marginal cost of lending rate plus two percent" — and Maharashtra — "shall be the State Bank of India highest Marginal Cost of Lending Rate plus two percent". These four states agreeing on the same formula is not proof every state uses it: use the RERA delay compensation calculator to check your own state's rate before relying on any single percentage as a national figure.

A possession delay also delays your Section 24(b) tax deduction

There is a tax consequence to a long possession delay that a RERA complaint alone does not fix. Under the old tax regime, the Section 24(b) interest deduction on a self-occupied property is capped at ₹2,00,000, but that deduction only becomes available once you actually possess the property — pre-construction interest you paid while waiting is not deductible in the year you paid it. It instead becomes deductible in five equal instalments starting the year possession/construction actually completes, so a multi-year Section 18 delay also pushes back, by the same number of years, when you can start claiming interest you have already paid on the home loan funding the same flat.