INDIA. Mumbai: The Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA) has issued show cause notices to 313 large housing projects with discrepancies on their registration pages and warned developers that investigators would be sent to their project sites if they did not respond to the notices within a month.
The MahaRERA has considered the discrepancies; the developer has shown a 75 percent expenditure, but the construction work is around 50 percent. The deadline to hand over possession is six months away, but the project completion is less than 50%.
Besides, issues like whether the developer comes under the ambit of the provisions of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, are being considered. Additionally, the ratings of the developers by market agencies, cases pending before the National Company Law Tribunal, and projects in which over ten buyer complaints are pending.
“As per the show cause notices issued on Monday, the developer’s authorized representative must know all facts present during the investigators’ visit to the project sites. If the developer’s representative is not present, then the investigators’ report will be considered final, and further action will be taken,” MahaRERA has stated.
The exercise is part of monitoring projects registered on MahaRERA’s portal by the developers. MahaRERA has appointed a special audit firm to examine large projects that involve big investments.
There are 242 red-flagged projects in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. They are Mumbai suburbs-109, Mumbai city-44, and Thane-58. Besides the projects red-flagged elsewhere, others include: Pune-56, Raigad-23, Palghar-8, Nagpur-7, Nashik-5, Latur-1, Sindhudurg-01, and Yavatmal-01, an official statement read.
As part of its project monitoring exercise, the authority served notices on 19,539 lapsed projects in December to update their information and provide real-time status of their projects. It has been noticed that 700 projects have been completed, and 705 projects have applied for re-registration.
Officials from MahaRERA say that between 125 and 150 developers come to the authority each month to tell them about projects that are done. However, for the current month, the number of completed projects has increased to 700. The officials added that the warning of strict action had impacted developers.
Section 11 of the RERA Act says that developers who have registered projects must upload information about the projects every three months. MahaRERA said that projects were being registered, but developers had to give information about the status of the projects. As per this section, a violation of the Act can lead to the imposition of a penalty of up to 30% of the total project cost.
RERA Registration
In another development, the authority has cautioned home buyers to beware of the projects that claim to have registered with MahaRERA in advertisements but, in reality, have not. As such, buyers should verify whether the project is registered before investing. Any housing project with more than eight flats or on a plot larger than 500 square meters must be registered with MahaRERA.
Also, the DIN number of every director involved in the project must be listed on the developers’ website and all other forms of communication. The developers must use 70 percent of the money the buyers invest towards the project. Once registered, no change in layout is permitted.
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