The real estate markets across the major cities is today witness to a new spate of consumer activism which is more political in its functioning than consumer centric. Worse even, many of them even operate as the de facto consumer courts in advising others in how they should take on the builders.
Delivery delays, mismatch in area, changes in structure or designs in a project and developers going back on other promises have been quite common. These issues have given rise to consumer activism, in courts and outside. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) slapping a fine of INR 630 crore on DLF gave some hope to the buyers.
The developers are by and large living in denial. The deep rooted psyche is that once the market conditions improve the buyers have no choice but to run for an asset class that is not only need-based but also a business where the demand far exceeds the supply. This medieval thought process is in fact the biggest roadblock in the way of best practices gaining ground in the Indian real estate.
Some discussions about best practices in the Indian real estate has started because today the investors also do not want their money to be locked in an asset that is neither growing nor is likely to get delivered. Worse even, there is no authority or court in India that has been successful in getting a stalled project restarted or in forcing a bankrupt builder into selling his assets to compensate his allottees.
The residents of a housing society, Supertech Emerald Court, in Noida were taken aback one fine morning when they found the office of facility management locked. The builder had left the maintenance overnight after having tussle with the Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) for quite some time over the maintenance, or rather the lack of it. The residents alleged that the builder had left them in the lurch as it was not a proper handover of maintenance to the RWA.
Indian real estate, of late, has woken up to the new reality of consumer blackmailing. While in most of the cases the grudge of the homebuyers has been genuine; it seems there is an organized mechanism emerging that want to encash upon the homebuyers’ acrimony with the developers.
Track2Realty tries to simplify the real estate terminologies in practice that often confuses the buyers. There is no rocket science in real estate that buyers can’t adopt and understand for their own better understanding of the most valuable asset called house.