Many developers do not make themselves available to customers, making it necessary for them to deal with marketing personnel who are trained to be evasive and non-committal.
The memories of Uphaar Tragedy on the fateful day of 13thJune, 1997, that claimed the lives of 59 and injured over 100 people, have not faded from the public memory. But it seems the developers in this part of the word are not ready to learn any lessons. For them firefighting is a mandatory provision that just needs to be installed, irrespective of its functionality.
RERA is one year old now and already the homebuyers are questioning the legislation, in the absence of any visible changes on the ground. The developers, on the contrary, feel RERA has already identified the challenges and hit the nail. Within the built environment the debate is inconclusive as to what extent RERA has brought in transparency and accountability and to what extent has it enhanced homebuyer confidence.
Nearly all the developers in the Indian real estate are chasing the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) but very few have succeeded in attracting the investment of expat Indians. Reason: They have tried to hard sell the properties without actually understanding what these fellow Indians living abroad want.
So, you have been blaming the builder for end-to-end problems that you have encountered before and after settling in your dream home. Cost of apartment, delay in delivery, mismatch in promises & performance, costly maintenance and poor facility management, the list goes endless. More often than not, the grievances are legitimate.
Investing in relationship management to earn the trust & goodwill of the homebuyers is something that the Indian real estate has not adopted as an industry practice. CRM or Customer Relationship Management is something that every developer today boasts of, but this relationship hardly goes beyond attending phone calls of aggrieved buyers and online registration of grievances.
It is noteworthy that Supertech has not only hit by the dissatisfied homebuyers but also been at the receiving end of government agencies and the law for two of its most ambitious projects, Emerald Court and Czar.
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.
In real estate, market dynamics is so more complex that all the marketing theories and economic rationale have already gone for the toss. The conventional financial definitions are often challenged by the imbalance of demand & supply. With real estate predominantly being a micro market business, each market has its own dynamics.
One of the most critical aspects of in business is ‘Caring Factor’. Every business on the face value tells its customers and stakeholders, including the employees, that it cares. It cares about them; it cares for them. It wants to make them feel loved and appreciated.