What a registered JDA actually protects
The agreement is the whole of the security in a co-investment. What it says, and what it deliberately does not.
A joint development agreement is not a sale, and the distinction is the point. Under a registered JDA the title stays in the landowner's name or in their SPV for the whole life of the project. Nothing is transferred, nothing is diluted, and the landowner's position on the register is the same on the day of handover as it was on the day the drawings started.
What the agreement does transfer is authority to act, and only within a defined scope. The power of attorney that runs alongside it lets the developer file for approvals, appoint contractors and execute sales on the owner's behalf. It is a working instrument, not a conveyance, and it is bounded by the scope written into the JDA.
Registration matters more than most owners expect. An unregistered development agreement is difficult to enforce and, in several states, inadmissible as evidence of the arrangement. Registering it puts the terms — the share, the timeline, the exit — on the public record, which is what makes them enforceable against a counterparty who later reads them differently.
The clauses worth reading twice are the ones about default and exit. A well-drafted agreement says what happens if approvals stall, if the market turns, or if either side wants out before completion. An agreement that is silent on those is not a simpler agreement. It is an agreement that will be argued about later.