Bangladesh regulates real estate development through the Real Estate Development and Management Act, 2010 and the approval framework around it, not through REHAB. REHAB is a trade association: valuable commercially, because buyers and lenders read membership as a signal of seriousness, but not the source of the legal obligations. Those come from the Act, the building rules and the approvals your project holds. This article covers what those obligations mean operationally — what records a developer must be able to produce, and when.
The obligations that shape day-to-day operations
| Obligation area | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Written agreement | Every buyer has a signed agreement setting out price, payment terms, specification and handover timing |
| Approvals before marketing | Marketing and taking money are tied to holding the required approvals for the project |
| Disclosure | Buyers are entitled to see the approved plan and the specification for what they are buying |
| Delivery timing | The agreed handover date carries consequences; the agreement should state them |
| No double sale | One unit, one buyer — a legal exposure as well as a commercial one |
| Landowner agreement | A joint venture requires a written agreement with the landowner, with defined terms |
None of these are unusual. What varies between developers is whether the evidence exists in a form that can be produced quickly.
The records that prove compliance
Compliance is not a policy document; it is a set of retrievable records:
- The signed agreement for every unit, matching the current payment schedule. Where terms changed, the restructure record. See booking to agreement document flow.
- The approval set for the project — clearance, plan approval, NOCs — with dates and current status. See RAJUK approval.
- The specification annexure as issued to buyers, versioned. Buyers hold you to the version they signed.
- The unit ledger, so a buyer's payment position can be stated on demand and defended.
- The unit state history, showing that a unit was committed once. This is what makes a double-sale allegation answerable.
- The landowner agreement and allocation record for JV projects. See JV agreement clauses.
Where developers get exposed
Verbal variations. A sales manager agrees a change to specification or price, it never reaches the agreement, and at handover the buyer holds a WhatsApp message. Treat any variation as a document that must be signed, or it will be enforced against you in the form the buyer kept.
Marketing ahead of approvals. A launch that runs ahead of the approval position is a compliance exposure and a source of later disputes when the approved plan differs from what was shown.
Handover date drift with no communication. Where the agreement provides consequences for late handover, silence makes them harder to manage, and buyers who discover a delay stop paying. See what a delay costs.
Compliance as a commercial asset
Buyers comparing three developers cannot assess construction quality from a brochure. What they can assess is whether you answer questions with documents. A developer who produces a payment statement in a minute, a specification annexure on request and a clear approval position wins buyers from developers who cannot — particularly NRB buyers, who have nothing else to go on. See the NRB buyer journey.
What to do next
Pick three units at random and try to produce, within ten minutes: the signed agreement, the current payment statement, the specification annexure the buyer signed, and the unit's state history. Anything you cannot produce is both a compliance exposure and a dispute you would lose — see the record set held per unit.