EOI or Booking: What Your Money Is Actually Doing at ACE Arte

The gap between those last two sentences is where buyers lose money, and it is not because anyone lied to them. It is because a refund promise has a shape, and most people never ask what shape.

What is an EOI in law?

Nothing. That is not a criticism, it is a description. We searched the text of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 as UP-RERA publishes it, and the model Agreement for Sale prescribed under the UP Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (Agreement for Sale/Lease) Rules, 2018, on 4 September 2026. The phrase "expression of interest" appears in neither. The Act knows an allottee, defined in Section 2(d) as a person to whom an apartment "has been allotted, sold (whether as freehold or leasehold) or otherwise transferred by the promoter". It knows an agreement for sale, defined in Section 2(c). It knows an advertisement, defined in Section 2(b) to include any notice or circular "inviting persons to purchase in any manner such plot, building or apartment or to make advances or deposits for such purposes".

An EOI lives in the space before the first of those. Which means its terms are not supplied by statute. They are supplied by the piece of paper you are handed, and by whatever the person at the desk confirms in writing. If it is not on the paper and not in your WhatsApp thread, it is not a term. That is the single most useful thing to understand about the instrument.

What does Section 13 say about money before an agreement?

It draws the only hard line in the pre-agreement zone, and it is a percentage.

Ten per cent of the cost of the apartment, and past that point the registered Agreement for Sale has to exist first. Section 13(2) then sets out what that agreement must specify: the particulars of development, the specifications, the internal and external development works, "the dates and the manner by which payments towards the cost of the apartment" are to be made, the date possession is to be handed over, and the rates of interest payable by each side on default. That is the document a booking is heading towards. An EOI is not heading anywhere in particular until you convert it.

How much of the price is ACE Arte's EOI?

Less than most buyers assume. The price list W.E.F. 21-08-2026 prints three EOI tiers, one per configuration, alongside the three tentative sizes and a pre-launch base rate of ₹16,995/sq.ft*.

Tiers, tentative sizes and the base rate exactly as printed on ACE's price list W.E.F. 21-08-2026. PLC, GST and other charges are named on the list as extra, with no rupee figure printed against any of them.

Now set that against Section 13(1). The statutory ceiling on pre-agreement money is ten per cent of the cost of the apartment, and every tier above sits comfortably inside it. ACE publishes "Starting From ₹3.27 CRORE*" on its own film for the smallest home, so the ₹10,00,000 tier is close to three per cent of the figure the developer has itself put in public, well under a third of the ceiling.

For the 4 BHK and the 4 BHK + S, ACE has published no headline total, so we do not print one. And the ratio worth having is not the one against base price in any case. Section 13(1) says cost of the apartment, and the cost of the apartment includes the heads the price list names as extra without pricing, so the honest version of this calculation needs a written cost sheet for a specific unit on a specific floor. That is the number that tells you how exposed you are while you make up your mind, and it is not a number a web page can responsibly produce for you.

What does a priority number actually guarantee?

Sequence. That is the whole of it, and it is worth being blunt because the words "first come first serve" do a lot of quiet work in a sales conversation.

The price list states the mechanism: units go on a first-come-first-serve basis and a priority number is given. Your number decides when you get to choose. It does not decide what is left when your turn arrives. Priority 4 in a tower where the first three buyers wanted the same stack is worth a great deal. Priority 4 where they did not is worth nothing in particular. Nobody can tell you in advance which of those you have bought, and any advisor who implies otherwise is guessing at other people's preferences.

What a priority number is not: it is not a reservation of a specific apartment, it is not a lock on a floor or a facing, and it is not by itself a price. Price and terms are fixed in the registered Agreement for Sale, which is why Section 13(2) exists. The mechanics of the queue and the tier table are set out on our ACE Arte EOI process page.

What exactly does the printed refund guarantee cover?

One case, stated cleanly. The price list prints that full payment is refunded without any deduction if a unit is not allotted. Read it as a conditional: the trigger is non-allotment. If the queue reaches your number and there is nothing left that matches your tier, or allotment does not happen for you for any reason on the developer's side, your money comes back whole. No processing deduction, no administrative charge. That is a genuinely strong term and it is the only refund guarantee the list prints.

Now the case it does not cover. You register an EOI, a unit is offered to you, and you decide not to proceed. That is a walk-away, not a non-allotment. On the price list, that case has no printed term. In practice, channel material and desks (including ours) treat a pre-allotment EOI as refundable, and we will say so on a call. A channel-material assurance is not a printed term. The only version of it that will help you in six months is one that exists in writing, in a message you still have, from the party that holds the money.

So obtain it before you pay, in the same breath as the transfer. Not reassurance on a call. One written message carrying four things: the walk-away terms, the non-allotment terms, a day count against each of those two cases, and the name the receipt will be issued in.

The wording carries more weight here than people expect, because a reply can be given in complete good faith and still leave you holding nothing. A message that restates the printed non-allotment guarantee has told you what the price list already told you. A message saying an EOI is of course refundable has given you a sentiment, not a term. A message with no day count in it is a promise without a deadline, which is the version that quietly costs people months. And three of those four present reads, on a phone at night, exactly like four.

When does the money get hard to take back?

There are four positions, and the door narrows at each one.

1. Before you pay anything

   Everything is negotiable, including the refund terms. This is the only stage at which asking costs you nothing, and it is the stage most buyers skip.

2. EOI paid, no unit allotted

   The printed guarantee is doing the work: full payment refunded without any deduction. This is the strongest position you will hold after money has moved.

3. EOI paid, unit offered, you decline

   Outside the printed guarantee. Whatever you obtained in writing at stage one is now the entire basis of your claim.

4. Allotted, converted to booking, Agreement for Sale executed and registered

   You are an allottee under Section 2(d). Section 19(6) makes you responsible for making the payments in the manner and within the time specified in the agreement, and Section 19(7) makes you liable for interest on delay. Exit is now governed by the cancellation terms of the agreement itself. Section 11(5) provides that the promoter may cancel an allotment only in terms of the agreement for sale, with a right for the allottee to approach the Authority where a cancellation is not in accordance with those terms, unilateral and without sufficient cause.

One route back exists independently of all of that. Section 12 provides that where a person makes an advance or a deposit on the basis of the information contained in a notice, advertisement or prospectus, or on the basis of a model apartment, and sustains loss or damage by reason of any incorrect or false statement in it, the promoter must compensate; and if that person intends to withdraw from the proposed project, "he shall be returned his entire investment along with interest at such rate as may be prescribed and the compensation in the manner provided under this Act". This is why we transcribe documents rather than summarise them, and why every figure on this site carries the date it was read. A statement in a circulated price list is not decorative.

Where does the money sit, and where should the cheque go?

Two different questions, and only the second has a printed answer.

On where it sits: Section 4(2)(l)(D) requires a promoter to declare, at registration, "that seventy per cent. of the amounts realised for the real estate project from the allottees, from time to time, shall be deposited in a separate account to be maintained in a scheduled bank to cover the cost of construction and the land cost and shall be used only for that purpose". Read alongside the Section 2(d) definition of allottee, that provision attaches to amounts realised from allottees. A person holding an EOI before any allotment has been made is not yet an allottee on that definition. We flag this as a reading of two provisions rather than as a settled ruling, and we flag it because the practical response is simple: ask, in writing, which account your EOI will be held in and get the receipt.

On where the cheque goes, the price list is exact, and exactness here is the whole defence against a mis-routed payment:

The favour line carries a plain hyphen between A/C and ACE ARTE. Match it character for character. The UP model Agreement for Sale has a Mode of Payment clause built for exactly this: all payments are made "on written demand by the Promoter" through account payee cheque, demand draft, bankers cheque or online payment in favour of a named beneficiary payable at a named place. The name in that blank is not decoration, it is the control. If the beneficiary you are given differs from the printed one by a single word, stop and ask why before anything moves, and never make a payment to an individual.

What to get in writing before you pay

• The refund terms for non-allotment and for a walk-away, stated as two separate cases, with a day count for each.
• The receipt in the name of ACE Infracity Developers Pvt. Ltd., not in the name of any agent or individual.
• The beneficiary name and account number, matched against the printed collection account above.
• Which account the EOI will be held in until it converts.
• The priority number itself, in writing, on the day you pay.
• The date on which the Agreement for Sale is expected to be executed and registered, which is the boundary Section 13(1) is built around.

Written 4 September 2026 by our desk, an authorised channel partner. We are not ACE Infracity Developers and this is not their official website. You book in your own name with the developer and every payment goes to the developer's designated account. Statutory text on this page is quoted from the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 and the model Agreement for Sale under the UP Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (Agreement for Sale/Lease) Rules, 2018, both as published at up-rera.in and read on 4 September 2026. It is a reading aid, not legal advice.