Red Flags in a Brochure: the Claims That Should Make You Ask for the Document

This one is uncomfortable to write, so let us start with the disclosure. SUYUG's own earlier marketing carried a superlative with nothing behind it and a possession claim that should not have been made. Both were removed. The rules below are not observations about other people's brochures; they are the pattern we found when we audited our own.

A brochure is a sales document and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that brochures mix three different kinds of statement — claims, specifications and promises — and print them in the same typeface, so a reader cannot tell which is which.

Claim, specification, promise

Separate them and most of the difficulty disappears.

• A claim is an assertion about the world: the best address on the corridor, a fast-appreciating micro-market, a landmark development. It is checkable only if a benchmark and a source are supplied. Usually neither is.
• A specification is a description of the thing being built: a flooring material, a lift make, a ceiling height. It is checkable against the specification annexed to the agreement for sale, and only that annexure binds.
• A promise is a commitment to do something by a time: possession, an amenity, a facility. It matters only if it appears in the agreement, because that is the instrument section 18 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 attaches to when possession is not given by the date specified in it.

Read a brochure with three highlighters and the structure of the document changes in front of you. Most of the page is claims. Almost none of it is promises.

Superlatives with no benchmark

"The finest", "the most sought-after", "the best-connected". Each asserts a ranking, and a ranking needs a field, a measure and a date. Against which projects, on what criterion, measured when, by whom?

This is the one we caught in our own copy. A superlative had been written into marketing material with no benchmark behind it — not out of intent to deceive, but because that is simply the register property marketing is written in, and nobody stopped to ask what would prove it. It was removed rather than sourced, because the honest options are to cite a basis or to delete the sentence, and there was no basis to cite.

The reader's version of this rule: treat every superlative as a claim awaiting a source. Ask what it is measured against. A developer who can answer has done something interesting; a developer who cannot has written filler, which is worth knowing about the rest of the document too.

Percentages with no source

Appreciation figures, rental yields, projected returns, "growth" in a corridor. These are the most consequential unsourced claims in property marketing, because a buyer can and does base a purchase on them.

A percentage is only meaningful with four things attached: what was measured, over which period, in which geography, and by whom. A figure lifted from an unnamed report and rounded up is not data. Neither is a range that appears in three developers' brochures with three different numbers.

This site publishes no appreciation or yield projection at all, for the plain reason that we cannot source one to a standard we would be willing to defend. That is also the ask: request the source, in writing, with the publisher and the date. If it arrives, read it — reports are frequently about a different geography or period from the one the brochure implies. If it does not arrive, the figure was decoration.

Dates: what a promoter can and cannot commit to

Possession is where brochures do the most damage, because a date in a brochure and a date in an agreement are entirely different objects.

A promoter declares a completion timeline to the authority under section 4(2)(l)(C) of the Act when registering, and the registration's validity is tied to it. Your own entitlement runs off the date specified in your agreement for sale, which is what section 18 operates on. A month printed on a page, with no instrument behind it, gives you nothing.

Our own removed claim was of this kind. The rule that replaced it is simple and it is the one to hold any developer to: a date that matters is a date in your agreement. Where a brochure carries one, ask for it to be reflected in the agreement. Where the answer is that it cannot be, you have learned what the brochure date was worth.

Certification words used loosely

Green building vocabulary is now used as adjective rather than as fact, and the distinctions are real ones.

• Pre-certified means a rating body has assessed the design and issued a pre-certification. It is about the design intent, at a point in time.
• Certified means the completed building was assessed and rated. It is a different, later and more demanding event.
• Aligned, inspired by, designed to standards — these are not certifications at all. No body issued anything.

The test is the same in every case: which body, which project, which document, and may I see it? A certification is a piece of paper with an issuing organisation on it. Where SUYUG's projects hold a pre-certification, this site says pre-certified and stops there — no rating level is published, because a level is decided at final certification and printing one earlier would be inventing it.

Distances, travel times and "minutes from"

Every brochure has the page: a list of destinations with times or distances beside them. It is almost always the least reliable page in the document.

The reason is that the figures are not defined. Measured from which point on the site, by which route, at what time of day, in what traffic, by what mode? Change any of those and the number changes. Two brochures for adjacent projects routinely print different figures for the same destination, which is proof enough that the numbers are not measurements.

This site publishes no travel time and no distance for exactly that reason. What is publishable is direction and route — which road a project sits on, which junction it takes access from, what lies along that road — and those you can verify on a map yourself. If a brochure's proximity page is what is selling you the project, drive the route yourself at the hour you would actually drive it.

Images: renders, stock and construction stages

Three kinds of image appear in property marketing and only one of them is a photograph of the thing being sold.

A render shows a design intent and should be labelled as an artist's impression. A photograph of the site should carry a date, because a photograph of a site is a claim about construction stage and construction stage changes. Stock photography — a family, a swimming pool, a skyline — illustrates a mood and is evidence of nothing at all.

The rule this site holds itself to is that an image is either a photograph with the month and year it was taken, or an artist's impression labelled as such. There is no third state. When you read someone else's brochure, ask which images are of the actual project, which are renders, and when the photographs were taken.

"Terms and conditions apply"

Where a brochure carries fine print, read it, because it is usually the most carefully written paragraph in the document. What should be there: that images are indicative, that specifications may be varied, that areas are subject to the agreement, that the offer is not an offer.

Two things are worth noticing. First, if the disclaimer contradicts the headline claim — indicative images, indicative areas, indicative amenities — then the brochure has already told you it is not evidence, and you should treat it accordingly. Second, section 14(2) of the Act restricts alterations to sanctioned plans and specifications after the agreement, and a blanket "specifications may change at the developer's discretion" cannot enlarge that. Ask which changes the developer considers itself entitled to make, and under what provision.

The one-line request that resolves most of this

Almost every red flag above collapses into a single email, and it is worth sending verbatim:

"Please send me the document behind each of the following claims in your brochure, or confirm that no document exists: [list them]."

It is polite, it is specific, and it is answerable. What comes back sorts the brochure into the parts that are evidence and the parts that are atmosphere — and the second category is not a scandal, as long as you know which is which before you pay anything.

What SUYUG publishes and what it declines to publish is set out project by project on the projects page, with the registrations transcribed on the registrations page so that the claims on this site can be checked against the regulator rather than taken on trust.