RERA Act at a glance:
Back in March 2016, the union government came up with a real estate regulatory bill in order to protect home buyers across the country from delays in delivery of the projects. The said bill proposed to make builders and promoters accountable for any kind of delays in the real estate projects. Accordingly , the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) notified rules under the RERA Act for the union territories of Chandigarh, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Andaman and nicobar islands and Lakshadweep.
The central government has asked all the Indian states with legislatures to come up with their own version of RERA or to adopt the rules notified by HUPA by October 31. However,barring Gujarat, all other states have missed the government’s deadline. Reliable sources have confirmed that few other states including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have finalised RERA rules but have not yet notified about the same to the central government.
Let us have a look at some of the provisions in the RERA act as notified by HUPA and how it aims to protect home buyers:
1.Compensation for delayed projects: As notified by the HUPA ministry, allottees are liable to get monetary compensation from the developer if the developer fails to deliver the project on the promised schedule.
2.Registration charges halved: Taking into account the suggestion put forward by customers as well as real estate developers, the property registration charges have been reduced by over 50 percentage. According to the new rules, registration charges for an individual will stand at Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000 for all other entities.
3.Developers need to deposit money: The developers will now have to deposit 70 percent of the amount collected into a separate account within three months of applying for registration of the project. This move aims to ensure completion of the under-construction projects.
4.Total Transparency: The RERA Act aims to ensure total transparency in the realty sector. For the ongoing projects that are yet to receive completion certificate in specified time, the developer will now have to make public all the project related documents. These documents include sanctioned plans, amount received from the project allottees, project schedule etc.
5.Information availability: As per the notification from HUPA, the RERA Act will ensure that potential home buyers get easy access to all the project related information such as prospectus of the project, floor plans, property specifications, builder’s track record to name a few.