Every MahaRERA advertisement carries a registration number and, since 2023, a QR code. Scanning it is the easy part. Knowing what to look at once the project page opens, and what should make you close your chequebook, is the part nobody teaches. This is the complete portal check, the one we would run for family.
Key takeaways
- Search by registration number on the official portal, never from a link or PDF the seller provides; match the project name, phase and promoter entity exactly.
- The five-point read: registration status, promoter entity, completion date plus extensions, latest QPR, uploaded documents.
- Phases are separate registrations: the tower being sold to you must be inside the registration you checked.
- Two or more quarters of missing progress reports is a walk-away signal regardless of how alive the registration looks.
Before you start
You need ten minutes, the registration number from the ad or brochure, and one rule: type the portal address yourself (maharera.maharashtra.gov.in). Never verify through a link, screenshot or PDF certificate the sales office sends, because documents are easy to fabricate and the live portal is not. This walkthrough sits inside a larger discipline covered in what MahaRERA is and the 12-document checklist; here we do just the portal, properly.
The seven steps
- 1
Search by registration number
Exact-match the number from the advertisement. What you should see: one project. Red flag: number not found, or it resolves to a different project name than the one being sold.
- 2
Match name, phase and address
Project name, phase and survey number must match what you are buying. Red flag: you are being sold Phase 2 on Phase 1's registration; every phase is a separate legal project.
- 3
Read the status and validity
Healthy answers: registered and in validity, extended with a fresh date, or completed with OC. Red flags: lapsed, revoked, or expired with no extension on record.
- 4
Note the promoter's legal entity
The exact company or LLP name on the certificate is who your agreement must be with. Red flag: the agreement draft names a different entity than the registration.
- 5
Read the dates
The promised completion date the promoter declared, plus every extension. Red flag: multiple extensions already taken on a project still years from finishing.
- 6
Open the latest quarterly update
Check its date first, then bookings and construction percentage. Red flag: the newest QPR is two or more quarters old, or construction has not moved while bookings climbed.
- 7
Scan the documents and litigation tabs
Title report, approvals, commencement certificate, Form 1/2/3 certificates, and disclosed litigation. Red flag: sparse uploads on a project that has been selling for years.
An analogy: reading the label, not the packaging
Food packaging is marketing; the nutrition label is law. The brochure is packaging. The MahaRERA page is the label: standardized, sworn, and printed in the same format for every project in Maharashtra, which is exactly what makes comparison possible. Nobody chooses between two products by comparing their photography, and the portal exists so nobody has to choose between two towers that way either.
What each red flag actually means
Not found or mismatched: marketing an unregistered project above the exemption size is straightforwardly illegal, and quoting another phase's number is the industry's oldest sleight of hand. Either way, the seller began the relationship with a misrepresentation.
Lapsed or revoked: the registration died. MahaRERA publishes lapsed and deregistered lists precisely because these projects keep getting marketed; a lapsed project cannot lawfully sell you anything until revived. What each status actually means, and why to check the lists separately from the project page, is decoded in lapsed, revoked, deregistered.
Entity mismatch: brand names build nothing; entities do. Your rights attach to the entity on the certificate, and the litigation history check runs on that exact name.
Serial extensions and silent quarters: the two earliest symptoms in the stall sequence. The reading method for progress reports, healthy trendlines versus sick ones, is its own skill, taught in the QPR guide, and the exact Maharashtra filing dates tell you precisely when "silent" starts.
The portal shows today's snapshot only. Old filings get overwritten, so you cannot see whether the completion date quietly moved last year or whether bookings were restated. If your decision hinges on history, that history has to come from an archive, which is exactly what ReraGenie keeps for every Maharashtra project it covers.
Priya and Arjun run it in a sales office
Priya and Arjun (illustrative, as ever) ran the check from a sales-office sofa in Baner while the manager fetched coffee. Registration number: found. Phase: matched. Status: valid to December 2027. Entity: matched the draft allotment letter. Dates: no extensions. Latest QPR: filed three weeks ago, construction 45 percent, bookings 61 percent. Documents: title report, CC and eight quarters of certificates present. Ten minutes, and the conversation that followed was different: they asked why construction ran one quarter behind the promoter's own milestone plan, and got a straight answer about a monsoon-delayed basement. The manager later admitted almost no visitor ever mentions the portal.
After the portal: two checks the page cannot do
The portal validates the project as filed. It cannot tell you whether the promoter's other projects delivered on time, which lives in the track record method, and it cannot show you the land's registered history, which is the encumbrance certificate's job. A clean portal page plus those two checks is a genuinely verified purchase.
The manual version of all this, run across the portal, the archives and the promoter's whole portfolio, is what the Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report automates for any covered Maharashtra project: registration status, date history, QPR trendlines against the locality, promoter delivery record and disclosed litigation, on one verdict page. Check one project by hand with this guide; when you are comparing three, sign up on ReraGenie and let the archive do the assembling.
The one-line summary
Type the portal address yourself, exact-match the number, read status, entity, dates, the latest QPR and the documents, and treat silence, mismatches and serial extensions as answers in themselves. Ten minutes on the label beats any hour with the packaging.
Evaluating a project right now?
The ReraGenie buyer report reads every filing for one project and hands you the verdict, the risks and the questions to ask the builder. Rs 499, one time.
See the buyer report