RERA resolves buyer grievances; here's how

The adoption of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, (RERA) by 27 states and 8 union territories in the last five years has been the first successful step in acceptance at a national level. Ever since the RERA has been implemented in various states, close to one lakh projects and 71,514 agents have been registered to date while over 1 lakh cases of consumer disputes have been resolved.

“One of the important pillars of the RERA regulation was grievance redressal. Home buyers who suffered due to various issues and challenges like incomplete projects, project delays, lop-sided home-buying agreements, etc., were looking for justice. RERA sought to address these issues by creating a separate system to address the complaints of home buyers. Homebuyers, currently have option of filing a complaint with the RERA Authority, RERA Tribunal and RERA Adjudicating Officer,” said Dr Samantak Das, Head of Research and REIS.

“The success of the system can be gauged from the fact that the cumulative cases disposed of by various RERA authorities have witnessed a sharp rise annually. The cumulative number of cases disposed increased from 18,543 as of June 2019 to 106,428 cases as of January 2023,” he added.

The mandatory registration of projects under RERA brought much-needed uniformity in collating information essential for homebuyers. The registration of projects reflects the trends in the residential sector as is evident from the lowest registration during the pandemic year 2020. The state-wise analysis of the registrations indicates that few states account for a large share of registrations.

The state of Maharashtra accounts for the largest share of projects registration at 39% due to the presence of large cities like the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (comprising Thane, Navi Mumbai and Mumbai suburban areas), Pune, Nagpur and Nashik. As a mandate under Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA), all projects need to be registered and this has brought the much-needed uniformity in collating information essential for homebuyers.