How to Read a Builder’s Track Record Before You Invest in Their Project
Every builder in India has a brochure that looks impressive. Professional renders, ambitious timelines, testimonials from happy residents, and a project history that sounds solid. What the brochure doesn’t tell you is whether those projects were delivered on time, whether the quality matched what was promised, and what happened when buyers had problems.
The gap between what a builder presents and what they actually deliver is where most property buying mistakes happen. Here’s how to close that gap before you write the cheque.
Start with RERA Punjab
Every project above a certain size in Punjab must be registered with RERA Punjab. This is your first stop — not the builder’s website, not the sales team’s presentation.
On the RERA Punjab portal, search for the builder (promoter) by name. You’ll see every project they’ve registered, the declared completion dates for each, and the current status. This tells you three critical things immediately: how many projects they’ve run, whether they’ve been completing them on declared timelines, and whether any have been flagged for complaints or non-compliance.
A builder with ten registered projects and a pattern of two to three year delays across most of them is telling you something about your project before it begins. A builder with a clean track record of on-time or near-on-time completions is equally informative.
Visit Completed Projects in Person
This step gets skipped more often than it should, and it’s one of the most revealing things you can do.
Go to a project the builder completed two or three years ago. Not the sample flat in the current launch — an actual delivered building where real people have been living for a while. Walk around the common areas. Look at the lobby, the lifts, the parking, the garden. Talk to residents if you can — not the ones the sales team introduced you to, but people you find yourself.
Ask them: Was possession on time? Was the quality what was shown in the sample flat? Has the builder been responsive to maintenance issues? How does society run? Have there been problems the builder refused to address?
Three honest conversations with actual residents will tell you more than three hours with the sales team.
Check for Legal Cases and Complaints
RERA is a start, but it doesn’t capture everything. A search for the builder’s name along with terms like “consumer court,” “NCDRC complaint,” or “project delay case” in Indian legal databases or even news searches sometimes surfaces patterns that aren’t visible on the RERA portal.
Builders who have repeatedly been taken to consumer court for possession delays, quality deficiencies, or misrepresentation are doing you a favour by leaving that trail. It takes a few minutes to search. Skipping that search costs years of legal hassle if you end up in the same situation.
Evaluate the Builder-Buyer Agreement, Not the Brochure
Before committing, ask for the draft builder-buyer agreement. This is the document that actually governs the relationship — and it often looks very different from what the sales pitch implied.
Look specifically at the possession timeline and the penalty clause for delays. A builder who is confident in their timelines will agree to reasonable compensation for delays. A builder who insists on very low penalty clauses or vague “subject to force majeure” language is telling you they’re not confident in their own schedule.
Also check what the agreement says about construction specifications. If the agreement references generic specs rather than specific materials, finishes, and fittings, the sample flat’s quality doesn’t bind them to anything.
Check the Financial Health of the Project
An under-construction project can stall not because the builder is incompetent but because the project ran out of funding. This happens more often than buyers expect.
Ask what percentage of units in the project have been sold. A project that’s only 20% sold with construction already underway may be facing cash flow pressure. Ask whether the project has a construction-linked loan from a bank — banks that have approved project loans have already done some due diligence on the builder’s financial capacity.
Alvis Estates: Builder Due Diligence Done For You
At Alvis Estates, Sameer Mahajan does this research before recommending any project — RERA checks, site visits to completed projects, agreement reviews, and financial health assessments. Every project we recommend has been evaluated beyond the brochure. If you’re looking to invest in Mohali or Tricity and want to be sure you’re buying from a builder who will actually deliver, reach out. That’s exactly what 15 years of ground-level experience is for.