Most contracts are drafted by the stronger party, and buyers sign what builders wrote. Maharashtra inverted this: the state wrote the flat-purchase agreement itself, made its core clauses non-negotiable, and ordered builders to highlight, in a different colour, every place they changed the template. Which means checking your agreement is not lawyer-only work anymore. It is a comparison exercise, and this is the comparison list.

Key takeaways

  • The model agreement (Annexure A to the Maharashtra rules) is the prescribed template; Order 38/2022 made its key clauses non-negotiable.
  • Every deviation from the model text must be highlighted in a different colour, so unmarked-but-altered text is itself a violation.
  • The load-bearing clauses: 3 percent carpet variation with two-way price adjustment (1(g)), possession date with delay interest, and 5-year defect liability with 30-day rectification (7.4).
  • Read the coloured text first; it is a self-declared map of everywhere the builder wanted something the state did not give.

Why a model agreement exists

Before RERA, the agreement for sale was where buyer protections went to die: elastic areas, possession "endeavours", one-sided cancellation. The Act fixed the substance; Maharashtra fixed the words, publishing a model form and then, in Order 38/2022 (13 December 2022), drawing a hard line: certain clauses are non-negotiable, deviations are permitted only where they do not touch the statutory substance, and every deviation must be visibly highlighted for verification. What that leaves a promoter free to redraft, and by what procedure, is set out from the other side of the table.

An analogy: the model agreement is a government exam answer sheet with the correct answers pre-printed. The builder may add margin notes for their project's specifics, but they must write the notes in red ink. Your whole job as a reader is to check the red ink, because the black ink is the state's.

The 10 clauses to verify

  1. Parties and the entity. The promoter named must be the entity on the registration certificate. A different group company signing is your first red flag.
  2. Carpet area, clause 1(g). Your unit's carpet area per the RERA definition, with the 3 percent variation cap and two-way adjustment: refund for shortfall, payment for genuine excess, computed after the OC. The mechanics of claiming are in the carpet shortfall guide.
  3. The price and what it includes. One total, with parking, amenities and charges itemised, all payable into the project's Collection Account. Floor rise and location premiums belong inside that total rather than on a later demand letter, and what you are paying for height shows how fast they add up. The model makes that total escalation-free save for charges the authorities impose, and the escalation clause shows how to answer a price rise demanded after signing.
  4. The payment schedule. Construction-linked stages consistent with Section 13's 10 percent pre-agreement cap; compare against the plan types before initialling. The money taken before this document is governed by the allotment letter, which follows a MahaRERA model of its own, set out in the MahaRERA allotment letter.
  5. The possession date. A date, not a season, plus any grace period stated plainly. This date drives your Section 18 remedies; treat every word around it as load-bearing.
  6. Delay interest, both directions. The prescribed rate (SBI MCLR plus 2 percent) for their delay and yours, symmetric as the model requires. A draft where their delay pays less than yours is a highlighted-deviation candidate that should not survive negotiation.
  7. Defect liability, clause 7.4. Five years from possession, rectification within 30 days, free; compensation if not. Handover-day practice lives in the pre-possession checklist.
  8. Plans and specifications, frozen. Sanctioned plan references and the specification annexure, changeable only with consent per the Act, not by a "promoter may alter" catch-all.
  9. The society and conveyance timeline. Formation of the allottees' association and conveyance of title within the prescribed periods. This is the clause whose neglect Maharashtra's deemed conveyance remedy exists to fix, a topic we cover separately.
  10. Cancellation and forfeiture. What each side may terminate for, and what is forfeited: the model's balance here is the protection most private drafts historically gutted.
Warning

Unhighlighted deviations are the sharp practice to watch: text altered from the model with no colour marking. Keep a copy of the model form (free on the MahaRERA site) beside the draft, and spot-check the ten clauses above word by word. Where the draft and model diverge without highlighting, you have found both a problem and, under Order 38/2022, a compliance violation worth naming in writing.

Meera's coloured-ink afternoon

Meera (illustrative, as ever) received a 62-page draft with exactly four highlighted passages, all benign project-specifics. Her comparison against the model found a fifth change, unhighlighted: the delay-interest clause capped the promoter's liability at 12 months of interest. One email quoting Order 38/2022 and the symmetric-interest requirement brought back a corrected draft in three days, no lawyer involved. The state had done the drafting; she only had to do the diffing.

Where this sits in the sequence

The agreement check comes after the project checks, portal status, filings, document file, because a perfect agreement with a weak project is still a weak purchase. The Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report covers that project half for any covered Maharashtra project, including the complaints filed against it with their case numbers and the promoter's record across its other registrations, before you sit down with the draft. Sign up on ReraGenie, then read the coloured ink.

The one-line summary

Maharashtra wrote your agreement and made builders mark their edits in colour: verify the ten load-bearing clauses against the free model form, question every highlight, and treat any unhighlighted change as the finding it is. Undoing a registered agreement is its own procedure, and since November 2025 a defined one: cancelling a booking under Circular 50/2025. The clause most buyers never check is the one promising conveyance of the land to the society, and the remedy when it is never honoured is deemed conveyance. The clause most often quietly wrong is the one identifying your parking, which a builder may not be entitled to sell at all: what a builder can sell you. And the form that decides who inherits the flat is not in this agreement at all: nomination is not a will.

This article is educational and not legal advice. For agreement negotiation on a large purchase, a one-time legal review remains cheap insurance.

Evaluating a project right now?

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