CMDA clears in 4.3 months. DTCP projects show 30.5. The approval-lag gap every Tamil Nadu buyer should know

On every RERA registration, two dates sit quietly next to each other: the date the planning authority issued its permission, and the date the project was registered with TNRERA. The distance between them is a delivery signal most buyers never compute — so we computed it for every project in our index with both dates on record.

Inside the Chennai Metropolitan Area, the pipeline is tight: projects approved by the Greater Chennai Corporation reach the RERA register in a median of about three months, and CMDA-approved projects in about 4.3. Outside the metro, DTCP-approved projects show a median gap of 929 days — roughly 30.5 months between the permission on paper and the registration that legally allows sales.

Why the DTCP number is so large

Part of it is genuine process friction in district pipelines. But a large share is compositional: many DTCP entries in the register are older approvals that were regularised or registered late — projects that existed before their paperwork did. That is not a detail; it is the finding. When a district project shows you a years-old approval and a fresh RERA number, the gap itself is the question to ask the builder.

What a buyer does with this

Pull the approval date and the registration date on the project page (both are cited to the government filing). A short gap reads as a normally sequenced project. A multi-year gap means you ask: was this approval regularised? Was construction underway before registration? The answers exist in the same public record — our health check flags the pattern automatically.