“The fellow that owns his home is always just coming out of a hardware store” A meaningful quote that connects with all of us who have just bought a home or are planning to own one pretty soon & what could have been a better timing than today to think about buying your own house especially when the Lok Sabha has passed Real Estate Regulatory Bill. The bill promises to safeguard home buyer’s interests by ensuring transparency with respect to monetary transactions and documentation, time bound delivery of plots and flats by builders, clarity in terms of actual carpet area of the floor and quality players engaged in a healthy competition to win over real estate sector in the country.
The major points which accentuate the importance of real estate bill are not only crucial to the current times where the government needs foreign companies to invest in various sectors but also realizes the housing needs of the growing salaried class. These pointers are:
- Each and every real estate project is required to get registered with the Real Estate regulator. This regulatory authority will be formed on a state level and will operate upon every commercial and residential real estate project to settle any disputes and impose compensation.
- Developers will need to advertise their projects to buyers based on carpet area and not super built up area so that any mislead marketing can be avoided.
- The bill makes it mandatory for the developers to release all information pertaining to layout plans, building structural design, architects and schedule for completion to be submitted in writing to the Regulatory Authority.
- Real estate projects that measure more than 500 square meters or more than 8 apartments can only commence after necessary approvals have been received from the Real Estate Regulatory Authority of the state.
- Any delays with regards to completion of a project and its delivery will not be tolerated. The builders will have to pay an interest to buyers equal to the EMI buyer is paying aback to the bank.
- RERA further goes ahead and has made it compulsory for real estate developers to park 70% of its project funds in one account. This ensures transparency and continued focused efforts by the developer to build and deliver the project to the buyers.
- Any deficiency in the quality of the housing or structural flaws will be the direct sole responsibility of the developer and customers can contact for an after sales service to the developers within one year of purchase.
All the above legalities will ensure only quality builders and developers to exist and flourish in the sector, however, a lot will need to be managed efficiently at the state level so as to ensure that the clauses of RERA just doesn’t remain on paper. If implemented well, it will show an increase in the trust of salaries home buyers to begin home hunting besides an increase in demand and considerably reduced property prices. This will eventually open many doors for related industries that are a backbone of real estate sector namely cement, steel, furniture, hardware & electrical industries that will see an upsurge in revenues and sales online and offline both.
