Years after the last flat sells, many Maharashtra societies discover they own everything except the ground they stand on. The builder who was legally bound to convey the land within four months of the society's formation has moved on, dissolved, or simply never answers. Maharashtra's answer is unique in India: a process that registers the conveyance without the builder's signature at all.
Key takeaways
- MOFA Section 11 obliges the promoter to convey land and building to the society within four months of its formation; RERA's Section 17 carries the same obligation forward.
- When promoters default, the society applies to the Competent Authority, which can certify unilateral execution: deemed conveyance.
- The authority is expected to decide within six months; documentation quality is the real timeline.
- Conveyance is the key to redevelopment, FSI benefits and true ownership; treat it as the purchase's unfinished last mile.
What conveyance is, and why builders sit on it
Buying a flat buys you the flat and an undivided interest in the land, but the land's title transfers collectively: a conveyance deed from the promoter to the society. MOFA, Maharashtra's 1963 flat-buyers' law that RERA now overlays, gives the promoter four months from society formation to execute it. The reasons promoters delay are rarely sentimental: unconsumed FSI and TDR potential on the parcel, future redevelopment leverage, unsold units, or simple dissolution. Every year of delay leaves the society maintaining a building on land it does not own.
An analogy: you bought every apple, but the orchard's papers stayed with the seller. You can eat the fruit; you cannot replant, remortgage or redevelop the orchard, and when the trees age, the papers decide everything. Conveyance is the orchard's papers.
The deemed conveyance machinery
- 1
Form and register the society, then demand
A registered cooperative society (or the applicable entity) writes formally to the promoter demanding conveyance, the four-month clock's paper trail.
- 2
Assemble the application file
Registered agreements of members, society registration, OC and plans, the promoter correspondence, land records (7/12, property card), and the title chain. This file is nine-tenths of the timeline.
- 3
Apply to the Competent Authority
The District Deputy Registrar of Cooperative Societies for the area, with the prescribed application and fee.
- 4
The hearing
The authority verifies documents and hears the promoter (or their absence); genuine defences are rare, delay tactics common and increasingly unrewarded.
- 5
Certificate and unilateral execution
The authority certifies the case fit for deemed conveyance; the sub-registrar summons the promoter and registers the conveyance without their signature if unanswered. Expected disposal within six months of a complete application.
- 6
After: property card and records
Mutation of the society's name into the land records completes the transfer, the step societies forget and regret.
Source: MOFA Section 11 and the deemed conveyance rules; Competent Authority practice
That last step is one any member can check: once the mutation goes through, the 7/12 extract or property card for the land names the society rather than the promoter.
Why this matters more every year
Three doors open only with conveyance in hand. Redevelopment: no society can negotiate its own rebuilding from strength while the promoter holds the land; every redevelopment guide begins with title. It is also the hard gate on self-redevelopment, where the society becomes its own promoter and cannot begin without conveyance in hand. Buyers meet the other side of the same fact: a society's conveyance status is one of the extra checks on a redevelopment flat, because an unconveyed parcel puts the old promoter back in the chain. Entitlements: FSI increases, TDR and scheme benefits accrue to the landowner, which should be the society, not the vanished promoter. Finance and repair: structural repair loans and society-level decisions clear faster on owned land. Maharashtra has periodically run campaign drives to accelerate pending applications, and the direction of policy travel is consistently pro-society, but the application still has to be made, and thousands of eligible societies have never filed.
For buyers still choosing a flat: the conveyance record is a track-record signal nobody checks. A promoter whose completed societies all received timely conveyance is showing you their exit manners; one with a trail of deemed conveyance orders against them is showing you the opposite. The promoter's history includes how they leave.
Neha's society, four years late
Neha's Mulund society (illustrative, as ever) formed in 2022; the conveyance demand letters started in 2023 and were answered by silence, the promoter's SPV had two directors and no office. The society's managing committee spent one season assembling the file, forty-one agreements, OC, plans, the land extracts, filed in spring, and had the certificate before the next monsoon: within the six-month expectation, because nothing in the file needed a second hearing. The unilateral conveyance registered with the promoter's chair empty. Total cost per flat: less than one month's maintenance. The society's first act as landowner was commissioning a structural audit for the redevelopment conversation it could finally have.
Whether your project's promoter is the conveying kind is readable before you buy: the Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report covers the promoter's completed-project record for any covered Maharashtra project, and the society-formation and conveyance clauses belong on your agreement checklist. Sign up on ReraGenie while the last mile is still the builder's job, not yours.
The one-line summary
The law gave your society the land within four months and gave Maharashtra a way to take it without the builder's pen: form, demand, document, apply, and finish the purchase your agreement started, because every door that matters later, redevelopment above all, opens with the conveyance.
This article is educational and not legal advice. Societies should engage a practitioner experienced in deemed conveyance for the application.
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