Three parts of a project sit outside the flat you are buying and are easy to misread: the deck the towers stand on, the roads between them, and the decorative ledges on the facade. Each has an owner, or a use restriction, that the sale documents rarely spell out.
Key takeaways
- A podium may carry recreational open space, and when it does, that space vests in the society exactly as a ground level garden would.
- Structures over podium open space are capped at 15 percent of that open space, the same cap that applies on the ground.
- Internal layout roads may be called in by the Planning Authority and handed over by deed after development, with no compensation paid.
- A service floor is limited to 1.8 m in height and exists exclusively for services, with a higher one allowed only in medical buildings or above 70 m, by special permission recorded in writing.
- An architectural projection is limited to H divided by 20, and the owner must undertake in writing that it will never be converted to habitable or any other purpose.
The podium is not a private deck
Chapter 9, Regulation 9.13, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025# permits a podium for parking of vehicles and for other uses it names, on conditions.
- Height of at least 2.4 m from the floor to the soffit of the beam.
- For a special building it may come to within 6.0 m of the front, side and rear plot boundary, subject to the step margin provision in Regulation 6.2.3(c).
- It shall be designed to take the load of a fire engine where required.
- It may join two or more buildings or wings, provided fire engine manoeuvring space is available and the required distance between buildings is still maintained.
- Part of it may be used as a recreation or play area for schools, and part for a club house, subject to Regulation 3.4.7(i).
Then the clause that changes who owns what: recreational open space may be permitted on the podium, subject to Regulation 3.4.1(iii), and the structures allowed in Regulation 3.4.7 may be built over it, limited to 15 percent of the area of that open space.
That single clause carries the whole ownership question with it. If the landscaped deck above the parking is the project's recreational open space, then Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.2, Recreational Open Space - Owner‘s Undertaking applies to it in full: it is deemed to have vested in the society on sanction of the development permission, transfers at a nominal one rupee, and may not be sold, leased, allotted or transferred to any other person.
A podium garden is therefore not a facility the builder retains and licenses back to residents. Ask which part of the sanctioned layout is marked as recreational open space, because on many schemes the answer is the podium, and everything that follows from Regulation 3.4.2 follows from that mark on the plan.
The roads may stop being yours
Chapter 3, Regulation 3.3.11, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 is two sentences and it surprises people who assume a gated layout owns its own streets.
Whenever called upon by the Authority to do so, areas under internal layout roads shall be handed over to the Planning Authority by way of deed, after the roads have been developed, within the period specified in the commencement letter or development permission. And no compensation shall be paid by the Planning Authority for them.
Two consequences follow, and they pull in different directions for a buyer.
The land under the internal roads is not a permanent private asset of the layout. It is held subject to a call that the Authority may make, and when the call comes the transfer is by deed and free.
But it is a call, not an automatic event. Many layouts are never asked. So the honest question at the time of purchase is not "who owns the roads" in the abstract, it is what the commencement letter or development permission for this project actually says, because that document sets the period within which the handover must happen if it is required at all.
The neighbouring provisions add the geometry that shapes a layout's corners. Regulation 3.3.12 requires junctions of roads meeting at right angles to be rounded off, with the tangent length being half the road width, and the building set back at the required marginal distance from that rounding. Regulation 3.3.13 covers junctions under 60 degrees, and fixes a minimum rounding radius of 6 m. Regulation 3.3.14 deals with a plot surrounded on all sides, where the Authority may require access through an adjoining plot at the land locked owner's cost.
The service floor
Chapter 9, Regulation 9.33, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 is a single provision with a single number: a service floor of height not exceeding 1.8 m may be provided in a building exclusively for the provision or diversion of services.
A taller one is possible in exactly two situations: a building of medical use, or a building more than 70.0 m in height, and then only with the special permission of the Authority, with reasons recorded in writing.
That 1.8 m figure is the same one that appears in Regulation 6.8(iii), which keeps the service floor out of the FSI calculation for hospitals, shopping malls, plazas, three star and above hotels, and other buildings above 15.0 m. The height limit and the exemption are two halves of the same bargain: a floor low enough to be unusable as accommodation is not charged as accommodation.
The projection that must stay decorative
Chapter 9, Regulation 9.30, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 sets architectural projections by a formula rather than a fixed size.
| Direction | Permitted extent |
|---|---|
| Horizontal | H divided by 20, subject to a minimum of 0.3 m and a maximum of 3.0 m, exclusive of the 6.0 m side and rear marginal distance required for fire fighting vehicle movement in special buildings |
| Vertical, above the building | H divided by 20, subject to a maximum of 6.0 m |
H is the height of the building from ground level, so the entitlement grows with the tower and then stops: a 60 m building gets 3.0 m horizontally and is already at the cap.
The last line of the regulation is the one that matters after possession. The owner shall submit an undertaking to the Authority that such architectural projection shall not be converted to any habitable or other purpose.
Read that against the FSI position. Regulation 6.8(i) excludes architectural projections from the FSI calculation, which is why they are worth building: they add presence to a facade at no cost in development potential.
The undertaking is the price of that exemption. Enclosing a projection later to make a bay window into a study is not a small liberty taken with a balcony; it is occupying space that was exempted from FSI on a written promise that it would never be occupied. If a flat is offered with that conversion already done, the question to ask is what the sanctioned plan shows and what undertaking was given.
What to ask
- Ask which part of the layout is marked recreational open space, and check whether it is the podium, because Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.2 then governs who owns it.
- Read the commencement letter for the layout roads clause, since Chapter 3, Regulation 3.3.11 makes the handover a possibility with a defined period rather than a certainty.
- Ask what any low intermediate floor is sanctioned as, because a service floor is limited to 1.8 m and exists only for services.
- Compare the facade you were shown with the sanctioned elevation, and treat an enclosed projection as a question rather than a feature.
- Get the 15 percent figure checked on any podium clubhouse, since structures over podium open space carry the same cap as on the ground.
Where the filings come in
None of these are settled in the public register: they live in the sanctioned layout, the commencement letter and the undertakings filed with the Authority. What the register gives you free is the project's own account of itself, which is where to start and how to know what to ask for.
Every MahaRERA filing at reragenie.com lists the filed land area, the buildings and their floors, the promoter's extensions with the reasons given, the certifying architect and engineer, and any complaints or litigation with case numbers.
ReraGenie's buyer report, Rs 499, reads one project's full filing and the documents behind it, sets the promoter's record against the rest of the register, compares the possession slip with the median for the same pincode, and lists what the filings do not contain. It includes a project watch for 90 days, so a change in the filing reaches you by email.
For the wider ownership question, see the parts of a project that were never the builder's to sell, and for what is measured inside the flat itself, balcony, loft, cupboard and mezzanine.
Source: Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations for Maharashtra, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025. Sanctioned under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966.
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