Priya and Arjun spent a weekend building a spreadsheet for two Pune projects. They compared carpet area, price per square foot, floor rise, and the amenity charges each builder had quoted. What neither brochure told them was that some of what they were being charged for already belonged to them.
Key takeaways
- Recreational open space vests in the society on the day the development permission is sanctioned, under Regulation 3.4.2, and transfers to it for a nominal one rupee.
- That space may never be sold, leased, allotted or transferred to any other person, and the Authority can take possession if it is misused.
- A clubhouse standing on it is capped at 15 percent built up area over two storeys, and does not count in the project's FSI.
- Amenity space of 5 percent applies to layouts of 20,000 sq m or more, and where the Authority takes it over the owner is paid in in-situ FSI or TDR, not in sale proceeds.
- On ReraGenie's registry copy captured 11 August 2026, 1,601 published projects sit on 20,000 sq m or more, together holding 9,667 hectares of land.
- Meanwhile the balcony and the built in cupboard inside your flat are saleable area, because Regulation 6.6 puts both inside the measured periphery.
The garden is already yours
Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.2, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 is the provision every buyer in Maharashtra should be able to quote, and almost none can.
The owner must give an undertaking that the recreational open space is for the common use of all residents or occupants. Then the operative sentence: on sanction of the development permission, the recreational open space shall be deemed to have been vested in the society or association of the residents or occupants.
Not on possession. Not on conveyance. On sanction, which happens before the first flat is sold.
Where the society has not yet been formed, the owner undertakes to the Authority, at the time of the occupancy certificate for a group housing scheme, that he will transfer the recreational open space at a nominal cost of one rupee to the society whenever it comes into existence. And the regulation forecloses the alternatives explicitly: the space shall not be sold, leased out, allotted or transferred for any purpose to any other person, and shall not be put to any other use.
Read that against how open space is usually sold. A brochure describing landscaped gardens as a premium the buyer is paying for is describing land that the code has already vested in the buyers collectively. The garden is not an amenity the builder is providing out of generosity, and it is not stock he can hold back.
What a builder may legitimately charge for is the cost of developing and maintaining it. What he may not do is treat the land as his to sell, lease or convert, and Regulation 3.4.2 gives the Authority a remedy if he tries: it shall take over possession of the space, and it may not then hand that land to anyone except the society.
What may stand on it, and how much
Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.7, Structures Permitted in Open Space sets the limits on building in the open space, and the limits are tighter than most clubhouses suggest.
Banded by what the regulation caps
- HeightMaximum two storeyed structure. In case of a stilt, an additional floor may be allowed.
- Built up areaMaximum 15 percent of the recreational open space, of which the ground floor may not exceed 10 percent
- UsePavilion, gymnasium, fitness centre, club house, vipashyana and yoga centre, creche, kindergarten, library, or other structures for sports and recreational activity
- FSIThese structures are permitted without counting in FSI
Source: Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.7, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025
Two further provisions protect the space itself. Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.3 states that no permission shall be granted to delete or reduce the open spaces of an existing sanctioned layout; rearrangement without any decrease in area is possible with the consent of plot or tenement holders, but ordinarily not after four years from the first final sanction. And Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.4, Recreational Open Space - Exclusive requires the open space to be exclusive of accesses, internal roads, designations, reservations and land for road widening, so a strip beside a driveway cannot be counted twice.
Chapter 3, Regulation 3.4.6 adds a shape test: the minimum dimension is 10.0 m, and where the average width is under 20 m the length may not exceed two and a half times that width. A long thin ribbon along a boundary does not qualify as recreational open space.
The amenity plot, and who pays for it
Chapter 3, Regulation 3.5, UDCPR as updated 30 January 2025 works differently and applies to larger sites only.
| Area of land | Minimum amenity space to be provided |
|---|---|
| Less than 20,000 sq m | Nil |
| 20,000 sq m or more | 5 percent of the total area |
The percentage is taken on the gross area after deducting land under reservations and roads in the Development Plan, including road widening proposals. The owner develops that space for amenity uses. The Authority may insist on it being handed over where it is required for one of six named purposes: a garden, a playground, a municipal school, a municipal hospital, a fire brigade, or housing for project affected persons. For anything else, it may be taken over only with the owner's consent.
Where it is handed over, the owner is not left uncompensated: the amenity space is deemed to be a reservation in the Development Plan, and FSI in lieu of it is made available in-situ on the remaining land, or as TDR if the owner prefers, granted only after the transfer is complete.
That compensation route is the part a buyer should understand, because it explains why the arithmetic can look odd. The builder gives up 5 percent of the land and receives development rights back, which are then built into the towers the buyer is purchasing. The amenity plot is therefore already paid for, in the form of extra floors elsewhere on the site.
Names and numbers in this story are illustrative. When Priya and Arjun asked the second builder why the project's tower count had risen since the original brochure, the answer was in the layout plan: in-situ FSI against a handed over amenity space. Nothing improper had happened. But it did mean the "additional amenity development charge" on their cost sheet was worth a question, because the land it referred to had already been converted into saleable floors.
How much land this actually covers
Source: ReraGenie analysis of the MahaRERA project registry, 46,636 published projects outside Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban filing a land area, captured 11 August 2026
Only 3.4 percent of published projects sit on 20,000 sq m or more, so the 5 percent amenity obligation reaches a small minority of registrations. But those projects are the large ones: together they hold 9,667 hectares, and 5 percent of that is roughly 483 hectares of amenity space across the state.
Recreational open space, by contrast, applies far more widely, which is why it is the provision most buyers will actually encounter.
An analogy that holds
Think of a project as a building with a shared staircase. Nobody expects the builder to sell the staircase, or to charge each flat separately for the right to use it, because everyone can see it is common. Recreational open space is the same thing lying flat: the code treats the garden as structural to the scheme rather than as inventory, and it vests it in the residents at sanction precisely so it cannot be reclassified later.
The difference is only that a staircase is obviously shared and a lawn looks like land.
What is saleable, and often assumed not to be
The inverse mistake is just as common and costs more.
Chapter 6, Regulation 6.6, Calculation of Built-up area for the Purposes of FSI computes built up area on the outer periphery of the construction, floor by floor, and states that the open balcony, double height terraces and cupboard shall also be included in that periphery, irrespective of use or function. So the balcony you were told was free is measured area. So is the cupboard built into the bedroom wall.
The recreational floor is a mixed case. Chapter 6, Regulation 6.14, Provision of Recreational Floor lets a residential building above 30 m carry a recreational floor that is not counted in FSI, provided it is open on all sides, but its ancillary construction such as changing rooms and wash rooms is counted. And parking under Chapter 8, Regulation 8.1, Parking Spaces* is required by the code rather than optional, though a lock up garage is the one form of parking that consumes FSI.
What to ask before you sign
- Ask for the sanctioned layout plan and find the recreational open space on it, then check the area against what the brochure calls a garden.
- Ask when the society will be formed and get the Regulation 3.4.2 undertaking in writing, since the transfer is at one rupee and the obligation already exists.
- Question any charge that treats open space as a purchase rather than as development or maintenance cost.
- On a site above 20,000 sq m, ask whether amenity space was handed over and whether in-situ FSI or TDR was taken against it.
- Check what your carpet area excludes, because the balcony and the cupboard are inside the measured periphery whatever the brochure implies.
Where the filings come in
Most of this is settled in documents a buyer never sees unaided: the sanctioned layout, the amenity handover, the undertaking. What the public register does show is the project's own account of itself, and it is free to read.
Every MahaRERA filing on reragenie.com lists the filed land area, the buildings and their floors, the promoter's extensions with the reasons given, and any complaints or litigation with case numbers. Reading it alongside the layout plan is how a claim about open space gets checked rather than believed.
ReraGenie's buyer report, Rs 499, goes further on one project: it reads the filed documents, 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, which on questions like this is as useful as what they do. It includes a project watch for 90 days, so a change in the filing reaches you by email.
For more on how the measured area is drawn, see what counts as built up area, and for parking specifically, what the rules require against what the filings actually say.
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.
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