Brickplot Score Changelog

v3.0.2 — 2026-07-25

Headline: The flood hard cap is renamed to what it actually measures, and it has been repaired — it had silently stopped applying in June. Scores fall for projects sitting in a documented flood hotspot.

Renamed

“CWC Category-A flood zone” → “BBMP flood-hotspot proximity, no engineered mitigation” (cap unchanged at 5.4). CWC Category-A is a major-riverflood-forecast class, and Bangalore has no CWC river category — the old name described something the cap was never measuring. The cap fires on proximity to a documented flood hotspot, sourced from BBMP vulnerable-stormwater-drain and flood-prone-area records.

Repaired

In June 2026 we replaced a blanket, unsourced flood flag (which was wrong on roughly two-thirds of the projects it touched) with geo-derived classifications from that sourced hotspot data. Projects confirmed to sit in a hotspot were marked high and were meant to keep the cap. The published rubric, the red-flag check and the project pages were all updated to treat high as capped — but one of the two scoring engines was not, and from June onward it stopped applying the 5.4 ceiling to those projects. The flag still prevented a “Buy Now” verdict, so no project was ever recommended that shouldn’t have been, but the displayed scores were too high.

What changes for readers

• Scores drop to 5.4 for projects in a documented BBMP flood hotspot. Their verdicts move from Wait to Avoid.
• No project gains a “Buy Now” verdict from this change.
• Affected pages already displayed the flood flag; what was inconsistent was the score sitting next to it.

Both scoring engines now read the flood vocabulary from one shared definition, so the two cannot diverge again.

v3.0.1 — 2026-07-25

Headline: No change to the formula. A documentation and consistency correction: several surfaces were still publishing the pre-2026-06-02 apartment weights, so the site stated two different weightings of the same eleven axes.

What changed

• Corrected the published weights on the methodology page, the homepage score-engine chart, the machine-readable /llms.txt manifest, the downloadable buyer report and the internal analyst editor to match the canonical set on the Scorepage: Legal & Title 16, RERA Disclosure 9, Builder Financial Health 12, Buyer Sentiment 9, Bank Loan-Approval Depth 5, Location/Infrastructure/Climate 14, Value & Price Trajectory 10, Construction & Delivery 11, Governance & Approvals 4, Liveability & Build Quality 6, Investment Yield & Exit 4. Weights sum to 100.
• Corrected the axis weights shown on pages whose axis scores are synthesised estimates, which were still displaying the retired v2 weighting.
• No project was rescored and no published score or verdict changed as a result of this correction.

Note on the underlying reweight: the apartment weights were last changed on 2026-06-02 (v3.0 reweight) and applied in a full rescore on 2026-06-14. That change was not recorded here at the time; this entry closes that gap.

v3.0 — 2026-04-28

Headline: Apartment formula extended from 9 to 11 axes. Plot formula extended from 9 to 11 axes. Climate & environmental risk, liveability/build quality, investor yield, plot conversion status and plot utility/build-ready status formalised as scored inputs. Five new apartment hard caps and five new plot hard caps.

What changed — apartments

• Added Liveability & Build Quality (6%) — density, parking ratio, water source (Cauvery/BWSSB vs borewell), STP commissioning, power backup, fire systems beyond NOC, branded-spec audit, balcony depth and ventilation. v2 buried these inside Governance and Construction.
• Added Investment Yield & Exit Liquidity (5%) — gross and net rental yield, days-on-market, tenant-pool depth, holding cost (CAM + property tax), 12-month vacancy survey. v2 had no investor-facing axis.
• Reweighted Location → Location, Infrastructure & Climate Risk (12% → 14%). Absorbs CWC flood-hazard zone, CPCB 5-yr AQI trend, BIS seismic zone and MoEFCC industrial-cluster proximity as scored sub-points. Chennai 2015/2023, Bangalore 2022 outer-ring and Delhi-NCR AQI exceedance forced this.
• Reweighted Value & Price Trajectory (10% → 9%) and added a forward-supply sub-point: RERA-registered new launches within 2 km / 24 months indexed against absorption.
• Trimmed Legal & Title 18→16, RERA 12→10, Builder Health 14→12, Sentiment 10→8, Bank Depth 8→6, Construction 10→9, Governance 6→5 — to make headroom for the two new axes without inflating any single one.
• Added five hard caps — CWC Category-A flood with no mitigation (≤ 5.4), no commissioned STP at OC on >50-unit projects (≤ 5.9), parking ratio < 1.0 in Premium+ (≤ 6.4), borewell-only water in Cauvery/Krishna Stage-V deficit zones (≤ 6.4), CPCB 5-yr AQI > 200 within 2 km (≤ 6.9).

What changed — plots

• Added Conversion & Zoning Lock (6%) — DC conversion order, agri-to-NA gazette, master-plan zoning lock, FAR-amendment history. A plot without conversion cannot be financed, registered residential or insured. v2 mentioned this in sources but did not score it.
• Added Utility & Build-Ready Status (6%) — metered water within 500 m, BESCOM/equivalent load sanction, sewage trunk distance, soil bearing capacity (IS 1888). The four questions every villa-builder asks before pouring foundation.
• Reweighted Future Approval Risk → Future Approval & Climate Risk (10% same), absorbing CWC flood maps, IS-1893 seismic zoning, Geological Survey of India soil-bearing maps and Cartosat slope DEM as scored sub-points.
• Trimmed Title 22→20, Layout Approval 18→16, Access 12→11, Builder 10→9, Location 9, Amenity 6→5, Value 8→6, RERA 4→2.
• Added five plot hard caps — DC conversion not done (≤ 4.4), soil bearing < 100 kN/m² unmitigated (≤ 5.4), no metered water within 500 m (≤ 5.9), BESCOM connection unavailable post-handover (≤ 5.9), CWC Category-A flood with no engineered drainage (≤ 5.4).

Why

v2 ran for the back half of 2026 across the 1,721-project corpus. A second-pass review of buyer-survey data, broker call logs and investor due-diligence checklists across Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon and Mumbai surfaced three persistent gaps. Climate and environmental risk had moved from a tail concern to a deal-breaker — Chennai's 2015 and 2023 floods, Bangalore's 2022 outer-ring inundation, and Delhi-NCR's chronic AQI exceedance now show up at the top of buyer site-visit questionnaires. Liveability and build quality (parking, water source, STP, power, fire systems) consistently ranked in the top three drivers in our own owner-occupier surveys but were buried in Governance and Construction. Investment yield — rental yield, days-on-market, holding cost, tenant-pool depth — was the entire spreadsheet investors were running, and v2 ignored all four numbers. Plot-side, conversion status and utility/build-ready status were the two reasons the most expensive plot purchases turned dead — the buyer could not finance, register, insure, or ever build.

Affected projects

All apartment and plot reviews in the Brickplot universe will be re-scored under v3 as their next editorial review cycle comes up. Project pages built before 2026-04-28 continue to display nine v2 axes until their re-score. Pages whose v3 score moves more than one point from v2 will be surfaced on the Avoid List and Wait List with the delta annotated, the same convention as v1→v2.

v2.0 — 2026-04-27

Headline: Six-axis formula re-architected to nine axes. Hard caps formalised. Segment normalisation introduced. NRI overlay added.

What changed

• Added Legal & Title Cleanliness (18%), Builder Financial Health (14%), and Governance & Approvals Depth (6%) as standalone axes. v1 buried these inside RERA Compliance and Builder Track Record.
• Reweighted Verified Buyer Sentiment from 20% to 10% with mandatory bot filtering and a bias toward post-possession review sentiment over launch-phase hype. Coached-review noise was the single largest source of v1 score drift.
• Split Construction Progress into Construction & Delivery Risk (10%) and Bank Loan-Approval Depth (8%). Bank APF presence is an independent legal proxy and deserved its own axis.
• Formalised eight hard caps with explicit ceilings — no valid RERA caps the score at 4.9, NCLT/IBC admission at 3.9, OC missing on RTM at 5.4, promoter conviction at 3.5.
• Introduced five-tier segment normalisation (Affordable, Mid, Premium, Luxury, Ultra) with per-axis weight modifiers, and the additive NRI-Safe flag.

Why

One year of running v1 across over 1,250 independently scored projects exposed three Indian-specific failure modes that v1 under-weighted. The Amrapali, Jaypee and Unitech failures were title and financial-health failures masquerading as construction risk — visible in MCA filings and EC searches years before any QPR red-flagged them. v1 read those signals into a single Builder Track Record axis at 15% weight; v2 isolates them. The Supertech Emerald Court demolition was a governance-and-approvals failure that v1 treated as a sub-question; v2 makes it an axis. And the chronic gap between Google Reviews sentiment and possession-cohort reality — well documented across Pune and outer Hyderabad — forced the sentiment reweighting.

Affected projects

All projects in the Brickplot universe were re-scored under v2 the day this rubric went live. Projects whose v2 score moves more than one point from v1 are surfaced on the Avoid List and Wait List with the delta annotated.

v1.0 — 2025

Headline: Initial launch of the Brickplot Score with six axes.

Original formula

• RERA Compliance (20%)
• Buyer Sentiment (20%)
• Builder Track Record (15%)
• Location Fundamentals (15%)
• Value for Money (15%)
• Construction Progress (15%)

v1 ran for 12 months across our corpus of over 1,250 independently scored projects. The v2 overview explains what changed and why.