Real-estate consumer cases: Centre to form committee to come up with model agreement for buying homes on anvil

Mumbai: The Centre will form a committee of all stakeholders and come up with a 'model agreement' for buyers and builders in three months, the secretary of the consumer affairs department said on Tuesday after a round table conference on effectively redressing “the grievances pertaining to the real estate sector”.

“Many cases are pending with the Supreme Court, which has asked us to have a model agreement that a lay person can understand. In three months, we will have a committee to draft such an agreement,” Rohit Kumar Singh, secretary, consumer affairs, Government of India, who was was joined by Nidhi Khare, additional secretary, consumer affairs, and Anupam Mishra, joint secretary, consumer affairs, told the media.

Conference looks into ways to redress grievances

The conference, which included presidents and members of consumer commissions across India, present and past RERA chiefs, representatives from the housing ministry, builders associations, bar association, and consumer bodies, aimed to look at ways to redress grievances and ensure that cases do not land up at consumer commissions.

“Real estate has the second highest proportion of complaints at the consumer commissions, at 10 % with around 54,000 cases. We wanted to ensure that issues of consumers are resolved soon as people put in their life saving to buy a home. Both preventive and curative suggestions came out of the conference,” Singh said.

As many as 15,154 cases were filed in Maharashtra. Of these, while 8,718 have been disposed of and 6,436 are pending, he said.

Major reasons for cases reaching commissions

The major reasons for cases reaching commissions included misleading ads by builders, clearances not being taken by builders, registration issues, delayed possession, and dispute with regard to the area.

“The model agreement is aimed at making the engagement between buyer and builder simple. It will basically be 'conditions of engagement” between buyers and builders in lay man's language. The committee will have judges, presidents and members of commissions, RERA and housing representatives, builders advocates and consumer bodies," said Singh.

“It was suggested that registration should not be by default but done only after enquiry so that buyers are not cheated,” said Khare.

“It couldn't have been the intention of Parliament to appoint a regulator and empower him to regulate only the part of the project that includes homebuyers and leave old residents in the rehab portion high and dry. This misinterpretation of the RERA Act by MahaRERA needs to be set right to give RERA protection to rehab portion residents,” said advocate Shirish Despande, chairman of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat.