Fear of property auction makes developers cough up MahaRERA penalties

The fear of their properties getting auctioned by the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA) has made some of the errant developers pay up penalties and compensation that they were holding back for months together.

In the last few weeks, ₹8.57 crore have been recovered from 11 developers in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The developers had their projects in Suburban Mumbai, Mumbai City, Raigad and Thane districts.

These were from the 20 recovery warrants issued by MahaRERA.

The developers from suburban Mumbai are Vidhi Realtors, Skystar Bidcan, Lohitka Properties, Vision Developers and Vijaykamal Properties. From these five realtors, a total of nearly ₹5.40 crore was recovered.

From Mumbai City, the defaulting developers were Matoshree Properties, Shree Sadguru Deluxe and Falak Developers, who put together coughed up ₹47.95 lakh. In Thane, there were two developers, Ravi Developers and Natasha Developers. Together, they paid up to ₹1.90 crore.

Lastly, Vinay Aggarwal, a developer from the Alibag area owed over Rs1 crore as compensation from the 13 warrants against it. Of which he has deposited Rs78.85 lakh to honour 10 warrants.

1007 warrants issued so far, ₹113 cr recovered

So far, the housing regulator has issued 1,007 warrants to recover the compensation amount tuning to ₹624.46 crore. Of these, so far, ₹113.17 crore has been recovered belonging to 124 warrants.

“The MahaRERA is constantly in touch with the concerned collector offices to recover compensation amount on behalf of the homebuyers. MahaRERA initiate the process to confiscate and auction the properties of those builders who were not budging from paying the compensation amount to the property purchasers.

"Soon, such auctions will be held in some other places in the state. While some developers, in order to avoid confiscation, have started coming forward to pay up the compensation amounts or settling the issue with the concerned consumers,” said a MahaRERA official.