The record, not the brochure

Almost everything a buyer is shown while shopping for a home (the brochure, the sales office, the broker, the advisory that gets a share of what you pay) was written or paid for to sell it. None of that is dishonest, exactly; it is simply not obliged to mention what is wrong.

The regulator’s file is the other half. Every promoter registered under RERA has to file a schedule, an escrow account, a completion date, and a quarterly update against it, and to go back to the regulator, on the record, if any of it slips. That file exists whether or not anyone reads it. DOSL reads it.

Deeds · Ownership · Surveys · Legal: the four things a filing can tell you that a brochure will not: who actually owns the land, whether the title is whole, what the survey and approvals say, and what is on record rather than what is promised.

Every registered project’s filings are read document by document: the registration certificate, the promoter’s quarterly returns, the CA certificate reconciling money collected against money spent, the annexures listing units, encumbrances and approvals. What each document says is recorded against the project it belongs to, with the filing it came from named alongside it.

The report that comes out the other end (the full report) puts the verdict first: will it be finished, is the price fair, is the land clean. The bad news is shown with the rest, because a report that only shows what looks good is a brochure with extra steps.

No builder, broker or bank pays to be listed, ranked, or left out. DOSL earns nothing when you buy a particular home, from a particular builder, through a particular link. There is no such link. Every registered project gets a page whether or not anyone is marketing it.

Not legal advice, not investment advice, and not a substitute for a lawyer reading the title deed before you pay anyone. A full report tells you which documents to pull and what to ask; it does not tell you whether to buy. Figures are as filed by the promoter and can be stale or wrong at source. Verify against certified records before you transact.

DOSL is built and maintained by one person, in Bengaluru, reading the same public filings anyone can request.

The goal is every registered project read in full, not the 3,982 read so far, and Pune brought up to the same depth as Bengaluru, rather than the registration-only coverage it has today. Past that: the plans and the filings themselves made legible on the page, not just their conclusions, so a reader can check the working and not just the verdict.