On most South Delhi builder floors there is no RERA registration, no five-year builder warranty and no municipal inspector who ever walked the site — because the plot is under 500 square metres and the plan was signed off by the builder’s own architect. The snag list you make before you release the final payment is the only warranty you get. Here is what to check, room by room, and how to hold the retention.
Because the statutory safety net that covers a tower almost never covers your floor. Under Section 3(2)(a) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, a project does not need RERA registration below certain thresholds, which is why so many Delhi builder floors sit outside the register. Delhi RERA has narrowed the loophole — by its clarification order, registration is mandatory if the plot exceeds 500 square metres regardless of unit count, and also where the number of units crosses eight on any plot size — but 500 square metres is about 598 square yards, and most South Delhi builder-floor plots are smaller than that. No registration means no Section 14(3) five-year defect liability to fall back on, and no RERA complaint to file.
Layer on how the plan was approved. Under the Unified Building Bye-laws for Delhi, 2016, plots up to 105 square metres need no sanction of building plans at all, and residential plots from 105 to 500 square metres are treated as low risk, with the architect or engineer empowered to issue the building permit. The professional who certifies the building is appointed and paid by the builder. Your own walkthrough is the inspection.
None of this means South Delhi builder floors are badly built. Plenty are built better than the towers, by builders who have worked the same four colonies for twenty years and cannot afford a bad reputation. It means the accountability is commercial rather than statutory: it sits in your sale agreement, in the money you have not yet paid, and in the quality of the list you put in front of the builder on handover day.
Half the defects that cost real money are not visible. Ask for these in writing, and treat a refusal as information:
| Document | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Sanctioned building plan | The only way to know whether what was built matches what was approved. A deviation can surface years later as a notice. |
| Completion-cum-occupancy certificate | Confirms the construction was formally closed. Delhi simplified this process in 2016; the absence of a certificate is worth a direct question. |
| Architect’s structural and supervision certificates | On a low-risk plot these are the certification. Get the architect’s name, registration and the certificates themselves. |
| Electrical load sanction and meter details | Whether the sanctioned load actually supports air conditioning in every room, and whose name the meter is in. |
| Water and sewer connection papers | The Delhi Jal Board connection for the building, and any borewell — see our note on the full cost of buying in Delhi for what these add. |
| Lift paperwork and warranty | Make, model, installation date, warranty terms and the AMC. The lift is the single most expensive thing in the common area. |
| Equipment warranty file | Water pump, inverter or generator, geysers, chimney, ACs, water treatment. Original invoices, not photocopies. |
| Mutation and no-dues | Property tax position, electricity and water dues, and any colony maintenance arrears. Our guide to RWAs explains how far a maintenance demand can actually be enforced. |
Before you sign anything, ask that the agreement name a retention amount held against the snag list, with a date by which the snags are to be cleared and a joint sign-off releasing it. This is ordinary practice in commercial fit-outs and entirely negotiable on a floor. A builder who agrees is telling you something; so is one who refuses.
Go in daylight. Carry a phone torch, a phone charger, a spirit level app, a small mirror, a marble or a ball bearing, and a roll of masking tape to mark each snag as you find it. Photograph everything with the tape visible. Then do it again at night, with every light on.
Take a civil contractor or an architect with you, paid by the hour. They will find in twenty minutes what you will miss entirely, and their presence changes the conversation. Book the walkthrough a week before the final payment is due, not on the day.
One row per snag: location, what is wrong, what the fix is. Numbered rows are harder to argue with than a paragraph. Masking tape in the photo proves where each one was.
Hand over one list in two parts. Being explicit that half the items are cosmetic earns you credibility on the half that is not, and the structural and waterproofing items are the ones you should refuse to compromise on.
Both parties sign the list with a target date per item. This single page is what you will rely on if the conversation turns difficult in month three.
Re-walk the list with the same person. Sign off item by item. Release the retention when the list closes, not before.
The signed list, the photographs, the warranty invoices, the architect’s certificates and the correspondence go in one place. Three years later, when a bathroom floor lifts, this file is the difference between a conversation and a dispute.
Where there is no registered project and no warranty, your remedies sit elsewhere: the terms of the sale agreement, and a consumer complaint where there is a deficiency in what was promised and paid for. Both get much harder without contemporaneous evidence, which is the real reason to photograph everything on day one. For anything serious, take a lawyer’s view on your own documents rather than a general rule.
Usually not. Section 3(2)(a) of the RERA Act sets registration thresholds that most Delhi builder-floor projects fall under. Delhi RERA has clarified that registration is mandatory where the plot exceeds 500 square metres regardless of how many units are built, and where the number of units crosses eight on any plot size. Since 500 square metres is roughly 598 square yards, a typical South Delhi plot is below the line. Check the Delhi RERA register if your plot is near or above it.
Not a statutory one. The five-year defect liability in Section 14(3) of the RERA Act applies to a registered project. On an unregistered floor your protection is whatever the sale agreement says, plus the equipment warranties, plus a consumer remedy where something promised and paid for was not delivered. That is exactly why the snag list and the retention matter.
On a plot up to 105 square metres, no building-plan sanction is required in Delhi at all. On residential plots from 105 to 500 square metres, the Unified Building Bye-laws treat the building as low risk and empower the architect or engineer to issue the building permit, with professional liability on them. That professional is appointed by the builder. There is generally no municipal site inspection of the kind people assume.
Water. Pour a bucket across every bathroom and balcony floor and watch where it goes. Slope and waterproofing failures are the most expensive thing to fix after you move in, the hardest to argue about later, and the easiest to prove with a thirty-second video on the day.
There is no standard figure and it is purely a matter of negotiation, usually settled as a lump sum tied to the size of the snag list rather than a percentage. What matters more than the amount is that it is written into the agreement with a date and a joint sign-off, so releasing it is an event rather than an argument.
Yes. A civil contractor or architect on an hourly fee is among the cheapest money you will spend on the purchase, and they will find things an owner cannot. They also shift the dynamic: a builder answers a contractor’s question about screed slope differently from a buyer’s.
Fine shrinkage cracks in plaster are normal as a building dries and are cosmetic. What is not routine: diagonal cracks running from the corners of doors and windows, cracks you can fit a card into, cracks at beam-column junctions, or any crack that is growing. Those need a structural engineer’s eye before you release the balance.
Ask for it. Delhi simplified the process for obtaining a completion-cum-occupancy certificate under the 2016 bye-laws, reducing the documents required. Where one has not been obtained, you want to know why before you pay, because unresolved deviations from the sanctioned plan travel with the property rather than with the builder.
We walk handovers in these colonies regularly and know which snags builders fix without argument and which they will try to leave with you.
Sources: Section 3(2)(a) and Section 14(3) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016; the Delhi RERA clarification order on registration thresholds, as reported by Business Standard and Outlook Money; the Press Information Bureau release on the Unified Building Bye-laws for Delhi, 2016 for the 105 sq m SARAL exemption, the low-risk classification for 105–500 sq m residential plots and the simplified completion-cum-occupancy procedure. The 500 sq m to 598 sq yd conversion is ours. The room-by-room checks are our own practice on handover walkthroughs, not a statutory standard, and they are not a substitute for a qualified inspection.
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