Form 1, 2 and 3: reading the certificates that track your builder's money

Three professionals stand between your builder and your money: an architect, an engineer and a chartered accountant. Nothing leaves a Maharashtra project's designated account without all three signing, and copies of what they sign are filed where you can read them. Most buyers have never opened one. This guide makes the three forms readable in ten minutes, because they are the closest thing the system has to your money's bank statement.

Why three signatures, and what each certifies#

The 70 percent rule fences buyer money inside the project; Forms 1, 2 and 3 are the gate in that fence. Withdrawals must be proportional to completion, and proportionality is not self-declared: it is certified, in prescribed formats, by three professionals whose registrations ride on their signatures.

Form 1, the architect. Certifies the physical completion percentage: which buildings, which floors, which works stand complete against the sanctioned plans. This is the "how much exists" number.

Form 2, the engineer. Certifies the work executed and its estimated cost against the project's cost baseline. This is the "what did it cost to build" number.

Form 3, the CA. The reconciliation: money collected from allottees, money spent on land and construction, and the amount the promoter may proportionately withdraw. This is the "may money move" verdict, and it is arithmetic on the other two. (The promoter's side of running that withdrawal cycle is in running the 70 percent account.)

Together they answer the only question that matters about an under-construction purchase: is the money advancing at the pace of the building, or faster?

An analogy: the three-signature cheque#

Companies control large payments with dual or triple signatories, on the theory that one person can err or stray but three rarely do together. Maharashtra applied that control to your booking instalments. The architect signs for the walls, the engineer for the bills, the CA for the ledger, and the bank honours withdrawals only against the trio. Reading the forms is simply checking the counterfoils of a chequebook that spends your money.

How to actually read them#

1. Find them. Project page on the MahaRERA portal, documents section, alongside the quarterly progress reports. A project drawing money regularly should show a regular certificate trail.
2. Read Form 1's percentage first. Note the completion figure and its date.
3. Cross-check against the QPR. The QPR's physical-progress number and Form 1's percentage should be siblings, close in value, dated near each other. A withdrawal certified at 60 percent completion in a quarter whose progress report says 45 is a contradiction someone should have to explain.
4. Watch Form 3's proportion. Collections rising quarter after quarter while certified completion crawls means money is accumulating or exiting faster than building is happening, the exact pattern that precedes trouble.
5. Mind the gaps. Bookings climbing in every QPR but no fresh certificates for several quarters means either no withdrawals (unusual for an active site) or filings in arrears, and both deserve the question.

Rohit's ten-minute read#

Rohit, our NRI buyer (illustrative, as ever), compared two Hyderabad-priced Maharashtra options from abroad using nothing but documents. Project A: eight quarters of QPRs, each flanked by certificate filings, Form 1 percentages marching 22, 31, 39, 48 in step with the progress reports. Project B: bookings at 70 percent, construction reported at 35, and no certificate newer than five quarters, on a site whose cranes, per a cousin's drive-by, had not moved since Diwali. Project B's sales office had a fluent explanation involving an approvals delay. The certificate trail had already testified otherwise, and Rohit had already stopped listening.

The limits, honestly#

Certificates certify; they do not guarantee. Professional certification quality varies, paper can outrun reality, and a compliant trail can coexist with a slow site, which is why the forms are one instrument in the full check: the portal read for status and dates, the QPR series for momentum, the track record for the promoter's habits. But as a single tell, an absent or contradictory certificate trail is among the highest-signal red flags the public record offers, and it is free.

Assembling all of it, certificate trail, QPR series, promoter history, locality benchmarks, is what the Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report does for any covered Maharashtra project, with the contradictions flagged instead of buried in PDFs. Before your next instalment, or your first, sign up on ReraGenie and read what the three professionals have been signing.

The one-line summary#

Form 1 says what stands, Form 2 says what it cost, Form 3 says what may move, and all three are filed where you can read them. Ten minutes of checking that they exist, stay current and agree with the progress reports is the cheapest financial audit you will ever run on anyone.