If you sign it, you are most likely giving up the delay interest the builder owes you for every month between the completion date in your registered agreement for sale and the new date in the addendum, and you are handing him the one thing that was missing in the 2026 orders that awarded such interest anyway: your express, written consent to a later date and to a waiver. Under the proviso to Section 18(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, a buyer who stays in the project is paid interest for every month of delay until possession, and Rule 16 of the Karnataka Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017 fixes the rate at the highest SBI MCLR plus two percent. Whether a builder's settlement addendum with a new completion date takes that away turns on three things the orders keep returning to: whether you actually received something for it, whether you had a real choice, and how wide its words are.
Part of the RERA and homebuyer disputes practice at S Jain & Attorneys, Bangalore.
This page is for a buyer of a delayed, under-construction flat in a registered Karnataka project whose builder has sent a settlement addendum or supplementary agreement before paying anything. The usual version carries a revised completion date, a waiver of the delay interest and of the pre-EMI the builder agreed to bear, a no-claims or full and final clause and a confidentiality clause, with any money promised for later. A consent letter for a change of promoter under Section 15 is a different document, covered in the guide on consent for a new promoter, and the interest itself is worked out in the guide on how much delay interest the builder owes.
What each clause costs you, and what the orders say about it:
| Clause in the addendum | What you give up | What the orders say | What to ask for instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revised completion date | Interest for the months up to the new date, and the right to cancel with a refund until that date passes | The builder's letters cannot move the date without your acceptance (Maharashtra tribunal, April 2026). A date you sign is a different matter | Interest to date paid or credited first, and the refund right kept if the new date is missed |
| Waiver of delay interest | The interest already accrued under Section 18 | A settlement signed with the sale deed, for money actually received, defeated a later delay claim (Karnataka tribunal, 2024) | A waiver limited to a stated period, effective only when a stated sum reaches your account |
| Waiver of pre-EMI | The builder's promise to pay the interest on your loan, while the loan stays yours | No order read for this guide deals with it | Arrears paid or credited first, and the builder's continuing promise kept in writing |
| No claims, or full and final | Every claim that exists on the day you sign | General words were confined to disputes existing when the deed was signed, and a later defects claim succeeded (Karnataka tribunal, September 2026) | A list of what is settled, with defects, carpet area, title, the occupancy certificate and amenities carved out |
| Confidentiality | Freedom to share the terms with other buyers, your bank or K-RERA | No order read for this guide decides it | Carve-outs for K-RERA, courts, your bank, your advisers and the association |
Three decisions of 2026 frame the choice, and one from 2024 shows the other side of it.
Standard form, no waiver
K-RERA held in September 2026 that buyers who signed the builder's standard-form agreement cannot be presumed to have waived their statutory rights merely by signing it.
Consent must be written
The Maharashtra tribunal held in April 2026 that consent to condone delay must be unequivocal, express and in writing, and that paying instalments on demand is not waiver.
Settlements read narrowly
The Karnataka tribunal held in September 2026 that a settlement deed's general words covered only the disputes existing when it was signed, not defects discovered later.
But settlements can bind
The same deed, signed with the sale deed and with the settlement amount received, had already defeated the buyers' claim for delay compensation in 2024.
If I sign the settlement addendum, do I lose the delay interest already owed to me?
For the period it covers, probably yes, though no order read for this guide decides a settlement addendum signed mid-construction before the builder pays anything. In Complaint 01520/2025, decided by K-RERA's Chairman on 7 September 2026, the buyers' agreement promised possession by 31 July 2025 and the builder relied on a clause treating delays in approvals as beyond its control. As the portal copy of the order records, K-RERA held that buyers who signed a standard-form agreement prepared by the promoter cannot be presumed to have voluntarily waived or surrendered their statutory rights merely by signing it, where they had no real or effective opportunity to negotiate or alter the clause. It then noted that the buyers had never consented to any waiver of compensation or to any revised possession timeline, and ordered about Rs 4.95 lakh in interest at SBI MCLR plus two percent from 31 July 2025 to 17 January 2026, almost all on the Rs 96.7 lakh paid by the promised date.
The other side of the line is a dispute the Karnataka Real Estate Appellate Tribunal has decided twice. Two buyers signed a settlement deed on the day their sale deed was registered in January 2020, received the agreed settlement amount and a reduction in the balance price, and took possession. When they later complained for delay interest, K-RERA dismissed the complaint on the settlement, and in Appeal 71/2022, decided on 14 November 2024, the Tribunal held them to it, because the deed was mutually agreed, both sides had performed it and their plea of duress came with no evidence. Before you decide, value what the waiver surrenders, following the delay interest calculation guide.
Why does the builder need my signature at all?
Because, short of a force majeure event your agreement recognises, nothing else moves your date: not his letters, not your continued payments and not an extension of the project's registration. In a common judgment of 27 April 2026 dismissing forty appeals by CCI Projects Pvt Ltd, the Maharashtra Real Estate Appellate Tribunal dealt with a builder that had written to buyers announcing revised possession dates and contended that buyers who paid on without protest had accepted them. The Tribunal held that agreements for sale are bilateral, that a unilateral revision of possession dates has no legal validity without mutual acceptance, and that paying instalments as demanded is performance of the contract, not waiver. Waiver, it said, is an intentional act with full knowledge of one's rights, and where the statute imposes a strict duty to finish on time, consent to condone delay must be unequivocal, express and in writing.
The registration route is shut too. K-RERA held in the September 2026 order that an extension of registration under Section 6 does not extinguish or dilute the right to interest under Section 18, a point the delay interest guide covers in more detail. Refusing to sign is not a missed payment either. Section 19(6) makes you responsible for payments in the manner and within the time specified in your agreement for sale, and a later addendum is not among them. A signed addendum supplies the written consent the builder lacks without it. That is what it is for.
Does a new completion date also delay my right to cancel and take a refund?
Yes, and it is the cost buyers most often miss. Section 18(1)(a) lets you withdraw and recover what you paid, with interest, where the promoter fails to give possession in accordance with the agreement for sale or duly completed by the date specified in it. In Newtech Promoters, decided on 11 November 2021, the Supreme Court called this an unconditional absolute right once possession is not given within the time stipulated under the terms of the agreement, regardless of unforeseen events not attributable to the buyer. Both are measured against the agreement, and the agreement can be changed. The proforma agreement for sale that K-RERA publishes for project registration says, at clause 22, that it may only be amended through written consent of the parties, and a signed addendum is that consent. Once the new date is the date specified, the exit opens only after it passes.
K-RERA has held buyers to a later date in an agreement they executed, as the delay interest guide records, so treat a signed date as binding unless something in the circumstances of signing undoes it. If the builder misses the new date as well, Section 18 applies from that date. Read the waiver for words such as "any delay, whether past or future", because a waiver that runs beyond the new date gives away the protection that makes the new date worth having.
What am I giving up by waiving the pre-EMI?
The builder's promise to carry the interest on your home loan until possession, while the loan itself stays yours. If you bought under a subvention arrangement, the builder undertook to pay the pre-EMI interest to the bank for a period. A waiver in the addendum releases him from that promise, and from any arrears if he has already stopped paying, but it is a document between you and the builder and does not change what your loan agreement requires you to pay the bank. No order read for this guide deals with a pre-EMI waiver inside a settlement addendum, so the safer path is to treat the arrears as money owed and to ask for them to be paid or credited before any waiver takes effect. What a subvention buyer can claim when the builder stops paying, and how K-RERA has dealt with it, is in the guide on a builder who has stopped paying pre-EMI.
Does a no-claims or full and final clause end every claim I have?
It ends the claims that existed when you signed, and the Karnataka tribunal has read such a clause no wider than that. In Appeal 42/2025, an appeal by the developer Goyal Hariyana Realty decided on 1 September 2026, the same settlement deed said that all disputes and claims subsisting between the parties were mutually terminated and unconditionally relinquished, and that the buyers had no further claims or demands. The buyers later found defects in construction and the adjudicating officer awarded Rs 6 lakh. The Tribunal held that the settlement was confined to disputes subsisting on the date it was executed, and that its general language could not be read as relinquishing claims for defects discovered later and not within the contemplation of the parties. It upheld the Rs 6 lakh, and also dismissed the appeal for the developer's conduct, which included an earlier challenge brought without the statutory pre-deposit and an appeal filed about 831 days late.
Read the two rulings together and the lesson is plain. A no-claims clause can defeat the claim it was written to settle, as it did the delay claim in 2024, and it may not reach a claim nobody knew about. Defects are the clearest instance, because Section 14(3) gives you five years from possession to notify them, as the guide on the five-year defect liability sets out. Do not rely on a narrow reading you would have to win at a tribunal. Ask for the carve-outs in writing.
Can the confidentiality clause stop me from going to K-RERA or talking to other buyers?
No order read for this guide decides that, so treat the clause as something to negotiate rather than something to disregard. Section 31 lets any aggrieved person file a complaint with K-RERA, and in the April 2026 judgment the Maharashtra tribunal refused to treat undertakings in which buyers promised to make no claim in any forum as binding on them, in the circumstances of that case. A confidentiality promise is a separate obligation, though, and breaking it hands the builder an argument you do not need. Ask for the clause to cover only the amount paid, with express carve-outs allowing disclosure to K-RERA, a court, your bank, your advisers, the association and other buyers considering the same document.
Key takeaway. The builder does not need your signature to finish the flat. He needs it to move the date against which your interest and your refund right are measured. Put a value on that before you sign, not after.
When will K-RERA or the tribunal hold me to what I signed?
When it looks like a genuine bargain: something real given, freely agreed and performed on both sides. The law allows such a bargain. Section 63 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 lets every promisee dispense with or remit performance, extend the time for it, or accept any satisfaction instead of it, which is the footing for an accord and satisfaction, and Section 62 recognises that parties may alter their contract. Section 19(8) of the Act lets the allottee's payment obligations and the interest on his late payments be reduced by mutual agreement. Its words speak of the allottee's side of the ledger, but the Tribunal relied on it in 2024 to uphold a settlement of delay interest.
The 2024 ruling shows what persuades. The deed recorded the disputes over delay compensation, recorded that the parties had reached a consensus, and recited that it was signed without force, undue influence or coercion. The buyers had received the settlement amount and the reduction in price, the sale deed was registered the same day and possession followed. The Supreme Court's test for unfair contracts, which Pioneer Urban Land and Infrastructure quotes from an earlier ruling, expressly does not apply where the bargaining power of the parties is equal or almost equal. An addendum you negotiated clause by clause, with real money paid, time to take advice and the changes you asked for actually made, is the builder's best case, and a fair one.
When can I argue that the addendum does not bind me?
When it was a take-it-or-leave-it form, nothing was actually paid, or its words go beyond what was settled, and when you can show it. The Supreme Court held in Pioneer Urban, decided on 2 April 2019, that a term will not be final and binding where flat purchasers had no option but to sign on a contract framed by the builder, and K-RERA applied the same idea in September 2026 to a clause the buyers had no real or effective opportunity to negotiate or alter. The Maharashtra tribunal dealt with paper signed later. On the builder's own account, most of the forty buyers before it had signed possession letters or undertakings without protest, confirming full and final settlement and promising no claim in any forum. The Tribunal held those documents not binding. They were signed after the orders, no payment under the orders was proved, the builder kept prosecuting its appeals, and they were standard forms signed by the weaker party under pressure of circumstances.
The Contract Act points the same way. Under Section 14, consent is free only when it is not caused by coercion, undue influence, fraud, misrepresentation or mistake, and Explanation 2 to Section 25 lets a court take the inadequacy of consideration into account in deciding whether consent was freely given, which matters when the builder paid nothing at all. Behind all of it sits Newtech's description of the Section 18 right as unconditional. But the burden of proof is yours. In 2024 the Tribunal rejected a plea of duress because no specific evidence or documents supported it. Keep the covering emails, the deadline, any message linking the addendum to possession or to the next demand, and a record of what you asked to change.
Common mistake. Signing the addendum and writing "under protest" beside the signature. A protest note helps on a possession letter you must sign to get the keys, but an addendum is a document you are free to refuse, and a protest written on a settlement contradicts the settlement itself. Negotiate the clauses, or decline to sign.
The builder will pay only after I sign. Should I sign first?
No. Make the waiver take effect only when the money is in your account, or exchange the signed addendum and the payment on the same day. Performance mattered in both rulings on settlements. The 2024 settlement bound the buyers because each side had done what it promised, and the Maharashtra undertakings failed partly because no payment under the orders was shown. If you sign a waiver that operates from the day you sign for a sum payable at possession, and the sum never arrives, you may find yourself arguing about whether the waiver survived his breach instead of claiming interest under the Act. A single sentence reduces that risk: this addendum takes effect only on receipt of the stated sum in the allottee's account, and is void if that sum is not received by the stated date.
What should I ask for before I sign?
Treat the addendum as an offer and answer it in writing, clause by clause.
- Ask for the addendum in an editable form and for a reasonable time to consider it, and make the request by email so the record shows you asked.
- Tally the interest owed to date at the Rule 16 rate, and the pre-EMI arrears, so you know what the waiver is worth.
- Ask for that figure, or an agreed part of it, to be paid before or at signing, with the waiver conditional on receipt.
- Limit any waiver to a stated period ending no later than the new date, and keep interest running if the new date is missed.
- Keep the right to withdraw with a refund under Section 18 if the new date is missed.
- Replace "all claims" with a list of what is settled, and carve out defects under Section 14(3), carpet area, title, the occupancy certificate and promised amenities.
- Narrow the confidentiality clause to the amount, with carve-outs for K-RERA, courts, your bank, your advisers and the association.
- Strike any recital that the delay was caused by events beyond the builder's control, and any clause the original agreement did not contain, such as a new arbitration or exclusive jurisdiction clause.
- Keep the final signed copy with every covering email, because the record of what was negotiated is evidence for whichever side later relies on it.
Four questions decide whether a signature binds, and each has an answer in the orders above.
Was money actually paid
The 2024 settlement bound the buyers because both sides performed it. The Maharashtra tribunal refused to enforce undertakings where payment under the orders was not proved.
Was there real choice
K-RERA and the Supreme Court both ask whether the buyer could negotiate the clause or had no option but to sign the builder's form.
What the words cover
The Karnataka tribunal confined a settlement's general words to disputes existing when it was signed, and upheld a later award for defects.
Is consent express
Letters and continued payments do not move the date. A signed document recording consent to a new date and to a waiver may well do so.
I have already signed. Is there anything I can still do?
Yes, but start by reading what you signed for what it actually settles and what you actually received. If the builder has not paid what the addendum promised, demand it in writing as soon as the payment date in the addendum passes, because his failure to perform is now the central fact. If the new date has passed, Section 18 runs from it, unless the waiver was drafted to cover future delay too. Claims the addendum's words do not reach, such as defects found later, survive on the September 2026 reasoning. And if you signed a form with no payment, no time and no room to negotiate, a complaint under Section 31 can put those facts to K-RERA, with the orders above in support, though the evidence will decide it. In the September 2026 order K-RERA described the cause of action for delay interest as continuing while the delay persisted and the compensation remained unpaid, but do not treat that as a reason to postpone acting.
Other buyers in the project have signed. Does that bind me?
No. A settlement addendum is a contract between you and the builder, and nobody else's signature signs it for you, however many buyers have signed theirs. The two-thirds consent in Section 15 applies when the promoter transfers his majority rights and liabilities in the project to a third party, which is a different document with its own checks, explained in the guide on consent for a new promoter. What other buyers' signatures do change is your bargaining position. A group that asks for the same changes together is tougher to refuse than one buyer facing a deadline.
If I refuse and complain to K-RERA instead, how long will it take and what will it cost?
Plan on months rather than weeks, with professional fees and your own time as the main costs, and treat any figure quoted to you as an indicative range. Section 29(4) asks K-RERA to dispose of matters within sixty days, but the September 2026 order was passed on a complaint filed in December 2025, and the order itself records that it could not be passed within that period because of adjournments and procedural reasons. An order can then be appealed to the Appellate Tribunal under Section 44, and the Tribunal's decision to the High Court under Section 58. If the builder appeals, the pre-deposit rules in the guide on a builder's appeal to the Karnataka tribunal apply.
Deadline warning. An appeal against a K-RERA order must be filed within sixty days of receiving its copy under Section 44(2), and the Tribunal admits a late appeal only for sufficient cause. If an addendum is offered after an order or while an appeal is pending, read it against those dates before you sign anything.
What do buyers get wrong with these addenda?
The version that reaches us is offered before the builder has paid anything: a revised completion date, a waiver of the delay interest and of the pre-EMI, and a no-claims clause, all effective on signature. What goes wrong is rarely the law. It is the order of events. The waiver is given first and its value worked out later, if at all, so the buyer cannot say what was surrendered. Nothing is asked for in writing, so there is no record of negotiation for either side to point to. And the addendum is signed as if the alternative were losing the flat, though declining a new document is not a missed payment under the agreement for sale. When these papers reach us after signature, the two things most often missing are a calculation of what the interest was worth on the day of signing and any written record of what the buyer asked to change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it lawful for a builder to ask me to waive RERA delay interest?
Nothing in the Act stops a builder from proposing a settlement, and a genuine settlement can bind you. Section 63 of the Indian Contract Act lets a promisee remit performance or accept any satisfaction, and in 2024 the Karnataka tribunal applied Section 19(8) of the Act to uphold a settlement that both sides had performed. What the orders refuse to do is infer a waiver from a standard form, a letter or continued payments.
I kept paying instalments after the builder's letter announcing a new date. Did I accept it?
Not on the Maharashtra tribunal's reasoning of April 2026. It held that paying instalments as demanded is performance of the contract, not waiver, and that consent to condone delay must be unequivocal, express and in writing. That judgment is persuasive in Karnataka, not binding.
The addendum says I signed freely and without pressure. Does that settle it?
It helps the builder. In 2024 the Karnataka tribunal relied on such a recital, together with the fact that both sides had performed the deed, and rejected a plea of duress that came without evidence. Keep your own record of the deadline, the emails and anything said about possession.
What if the builder misses the new date as well?
The new date becomes the date specified in your agreement, so Section 18 runs from it: interest for every month of delay after it until possession, or withdrawal with a refund. Check that the waiver does not extend to future delay.
The builder says the project's registration has been extended, so no interest is due. Is that right?
No. K-RERA held in September 2026 that an extension of registration under Section 6 does not extinguish or dilute the right to interest under Section 18. An extension of the project's registration is not a change to your agreement.
Will waiving the pre-EMI claim against the builder affect my home loan?
Not directly. The addendum is between you and the builder and does not change what your loan agreement requires you to pay the bank, which is why pre-EMI arrears should be paid or credited before any waiver takes effect.
Does a waiver in the addendum stop me from claiming for defects after possession?
Not on the Karnataka tribunal's reading of September 2026, which confined a broad settlement to the disputes existing when it was signed and upheld an award for defects discovered later. Section 14(3) gives five years from possession to notify defects. Ask for an express carve-out all the same.
Is there a deadline for signing the addendum?
Only the one the builder sets. Nothing in the Act obliges you to sign it, and the payment duties in Section 19(6) are measured by your agreement for sale. Take the time you need to price the waiver and ask for changes in writing.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified advocate for advice on your specific situation.
