What is RERA Act?
Date : 06 Aug, 2019
Post By Sankul Nagpal
The real estate business is an ever-growing and ever-expanding sector in India. And with new players coming into the business each day, the diverse options and alluring projects can take a toll on your hard-earned money if you are not careful.
Purchase of property in India can prove to be a monetary disaster if you are unaware of the correct legal procedure to be followed. Thousands of home-buyers in India experience the disaster of delayed possession and face mental agony as well as monetary loss.
However, to protect the buyer’s interest, enhancing professionalism and ensuring transparency in the real estate sector, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation notified the RERA rules for RERA Telangana on 31 July 2017.
As per the rules of the RERA Act, all real estate developers and builders are required to register their project offerings with RERA and real estate agents are required to register themselves with the RERA authority.
Furthermore, every ongoing and under-construction project that has not received their completion certificate prior to the existence of the RERA Act, 2016 are required to be registered with their respective state RERA Authority.
And as per the latest move by the MHUPA Section 2 (j) of the Telangana State Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017, defines “Ongoing Project” as a Project where development is going on and for which Occupancy Certificate or Completion Certificate has not been issued but excludes such Projects for which building permissions were approved prior to 01.01.2017 by the Competent Authorities viz., UDAs / DTCP / Municipal Corporations / Municipalities / Nagar Panchayats / TSIIC or as the case may be.
To protect buyer’s interest and strengthen the very objective of RERA, Rule 4 of the TSRERA Rules, 2017 further describes some of the Additional Disclosures which are to be done by the promoters of ongoing projects.
These include 1. The original sanctioned plan, layout plan, and specifications and the subsequent modifications carried out, if any, including the existing sanctioned plan, layout plan, and specifications, Order for Penalty extraction issued by TSRERA with regard to registration of Ongoing Projects To enforce the directions of the MHUPA has been issued by the TSRERA on 29th June 2019 that enables the authority to levy penalty on various projects. However, to protect even the interests of the developers, TSRERA during the meeting held on 29th June 2019 had decided to levy the penalty and give developers a fair chance to register their projects. Therefore, in the exercise of the powers vested under Section 59 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016. The TSRERA has once again decided to give another opportunity by charging Rs. 3,00,000 as a penalty, if registration is done or before 31/07/2019. The authority has further decided to keep the process of registration open for ongoing projects for which permission had been taken between 01/01/2017 and 31/08/2018 from the competent authorities.
2. The total amount of money collected from the allottees and the total amount of money used for the development of the project including the total amount of balance money lying with the promoter,
3. Status of the project (extent of development carried out till date and the extent of development pending) including the original time period disclosed to the allottee for completion of the project at the time of sale including the delay and the time period within which he undertakes to complete the pending project, which shall be commensurate with the extent of development already completed, and this information shall be certified by an engineer, an architect and a chartered accountant in practice.
4. The rules further establishes that a promoter shall disclose the size of the apartment based on carpet area even if earlier sold on any other basis such as super area, super built-up area, built-up area, etc. which shall not affect the validity of the agreement entered into between the promoter and the allottee to that extent.
5. In case of plotted development, the promoter shall disclose the area of the plot being sold to the allottees as per the layout plan.
Further on 31st August 2018, the TSRERA had announced the timeline to register the projects before 30th November 2018 online for the projects approved by the competent authorities i.e. UDA’s/ DTCP/ Municipal Corporations/ TSIIC between 1 January 2017 and 31 August 2018.
