Homebuyers To Have An Upper Hand After RERA, Developers To Benefit From The Same

After a wait of almost nine years, the Real Estate Regulatory Act is being implemented today (1st May 2017) and this will hopefully be the beginning of a period in which homebuyers will have an upper hand and the developers are going to be benefitted from the trust that homebuyers will have in the real estate sector.

The Act works towards the much needed credibility, transparency and the proper regulation in the real estate sector. The Act properly clarifies the duties, responsibilities and rights of both the developers and buyers.

All the regulatory authorities in the union territories and the states have been given the regulations of real estate by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) so that they adopt and follow them.

The layout plans have to be presented by the developers (minimum the size of 3 feet*2 feet) at the sites of the respective projects, along with all the marketing offices, the head office of the promoters and the offices where the selling of the properties is done.

Mostly, the decisions will be taken through the process of consensus by the regulatory authorities and in case a tie happens, a system of casting vote by the chairman shall be used. For the meetings to be held between the regulatory authorities, a minimum attendance will have to be maintained. If the meeting gets delayed because of the minimum attendance not being maintained, the meeting will have to be continued without it.

The ongoing-projects, for which developers have not received the completion certificate, and the new coming up projects, will have to be registered under regulatory authorities by the end of the month of July, 2017. Real estate agents will also have to get themselves registered under the concerned regulatory authorities and they have three months to do so.

If a new project is coming up, then the 70% of the money collected by the buyers will have to be deposited in a distinct account by the developer. In case the projects are ongoing, 70% of the unutilized money will have to be deposited.

In case there is any kind of violation of rules and norms of regulatory authorities and appellate panel, then RERA also has the clause of imprisoning the developers for three years and buyers and agents for one year.