For seven years, the 70 percent rule told Maharashtra builders what to do with buyer money and largely trusted them on the plumbing. In June 2024, MahaRERA stopped trusting the plumbing. Order No. 56/2024 laid the pipes itself for every project registered from 1 July 2024: three named accounts per project, fixed percentages between them, and a fence around the buyers' share that no lender may hold. Here is the route your rupee now takes, and the checks that confirm your project runs it.

Key takeaways

  • For projects registered from 1 July 2024, collections flow through three accounts: Collection (everything lands here), Separate (70 percent, construction and land only), Transaction (up to 30 percent).
  • The Collection and Separate accounts must be free of encumbrance, lien and third-party control, and cannot be attached except on MahaRERA's orders.
  • Withdrawals from the 70 percent remain gated by the Form 1/2/3 certificates, proportional to completion.
  • Your job is unchanged but sharper: pay only the named account, and read the filings that shadow it.

The route, gate by gate

Where an instalment travels under the 2024 directions
  1. 1

    You pay the Collection Account

    Every allottee payment, including parking and amenity charges (taxes excluded), lands in one named account per project. No side accounts, no 'pay the group company'.

  2. 2

    70 percent moves to the Separate Account

    Usable solely for the project's land and construction cost, closable only after completion and dues.

  3. 3

    Up to 30 percent moves to the Transaction Account

    The promoter's lawful share for overheads, marketing, finance costs and margin.

  4. 4

    Withdrawals from the 70 percent need three signatures

    Architect, engineer and CA certificates (Forms 1, 2, 3), proportional to certified completion, filed publicly.

  5. 5

    No lender may hold the first two

    The Collection and Separate accounts must be unencumbered, unliened and beyond third-party control, attachable only on MahaRERA's own orders.

Source: MahaRERA Order No. 56/2024 dated 27 June 2024, for projects registered from 1 July 2024

For projects with multiple promoters sharing revenue, the directions add a Master Account upstream: collections land there and split to each promoter's Collection Account by their shares, then bifurcate 70/30 as above. The geometry scales; the fences do not loosen. Seen from the other side of the counter, that same structure is a treasury a promoter has to operate, which is where the practical mistakes live.

An analogy: the hospital pharmacy

A hospital does not hand a patient's medicines budget to the ward in cash; it routes it through a pharmacy where every issue is prescribed, logged and auditable. The old single-account regime was a locked cupboard on the ward, better than nothing, dependent on the ward's discipline. The 2024 directions built the pharmacy: one intake counter, a 70 percent shelf that dispenses only against three professionals' prescriptions, and a 30 percent shelf for the ward's running costs. Your money still gets spent; it just cannot wander.

Why the regulator rebuilt the plumbing

The single "designated account" era left gaps that enforcement kept meeting: collections landing in group accounts before the designated one, lenders taking lien over project accounts, amenity charges routed around the fence. Each gap has a named fix in the order: the Collection Account catches everything including parking and amenities, the encumbrance bar keeps lenders' hands off the Collection and Separate accounts, and the Master Account structure ends the multi-promoter shell game. It is the difference between a rule and a mechanism, and it is why the order matters more to buyers than its dry title suggests: the classic pre-RERA failure, your money building someone else's project, now requires defeating architecture, not just temptation.

What a buyer actually does with this

  1. Pay only the named account. The designated details are in the registration; your demand letters should name them. A request to pay any other entity, "for GST adjustment", "to the group company", is the oldest bad sign in the book, worth a written question and usually a walk.
  2. Keep every instrument traceable. The route's protections attach to money inside the pipes; cash never enters them.
  3. Read the shadows. You cannot see the accounts, but you can see their shadows on the project page: the Form 1/2/3 certificate trail that gates the 70 percent, and the quarterly filings that should track it. Construction pacing with collections is the mechanism working; sales sprinting ahead of a frozen site is it failing, whatever the paperwork claims.

Neha (illustrative, as ever) met the mechanism in the wild: her Mulund project's demand letter named the Collection Account, but the sales executive suggested the parking charges go "separately, it is faster". One email citing the 2024 order's coverage of parking and amenity charges produced a corrected demand within a day, and a visibly more careful tone thereafter. The order is only paper until a buyer quotes it; then it is leverage.

Tip

Is your project registered before July 2024? The directions apply only to projects registered on or after 1 July 2024, so an older project keeps its single designated account, and the original 70 percent rule has always applied to it. It is the project's registration date that decides, not the date you booked, and more than half of the projects active on the register predate the order. Your practical checklist is identical: named account, traceable payments, certificate trail current, filings consistent.

The shadows are what the Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report reads for any covered Maharashtra project: its filing rhythm, construction progress against sales building by building, the documents on file, and the promoter's record on its other registrations, set out as facts before your next payment. Sign up on ReraGenie and let the plumbing's public record speak.

The one-line summary

In a project registered since July 2024 your instalments travel fixed pipes: everything into Collection, 70 percent to a land-and-construction Separate Account behind three professional signatures that no lender may hold, and 30 percent to the promoter. Pay the named account, keep the trail, read the shadows.

This article is educational and not legal advice. For a dispute, consult a lawyer who practices before MahaRERA.

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