Form 5 and the project account: what the annual RERA audit really tests
The rule is easy to recite: seventy per cent of the amounts realised from allottees goes into a separate project account and is used only for that project's construction and land cost. The annual audit is where the recitation meets the ledger.
What the auditor is certifying
Form 5 is a chartered accountant's certification that withdrawals from the project account are in proportion to the percentage of completion — that money taken out matches construction actually delivered, certified by the engineer and architect alongside.
Where the breach usually happens
- Funding an early-stage project from a later-stage one because the cash is sitting there.
- Treating overheads and marketing as project cost without a defensible allocation basis.
- Withdrawing against optimistic completion certificates that later have to be revised down.
The account is per project, not per promoter. Fungibility is exactly what the provision was written to prevent.
Reconcile quarterly rather than annually. An error found in March is a correction; the same error found in an audit is a disclosure.
More reading
An agent's records and advertisements: what MahaRERA expects to see
Registration is the beginning. The obligations that follow are the ones agents are actually penalised for missing.
Registering a project with MahaRERA: the document set that avoids a query
Most registration delays are not rejections — they are queries against an incomplete file. Here is the bundle that goes in clean the first time.
The 2026 MahaRERA QPR calendar every promoter needs
Quarterly Progress Reports are where good projects quietly slip into default. Here is the year-round calendar — and the disclosures that trip promoters up most.