Mumbai: Even after a year, the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA) has not taken any decision whether to include housing portals under its ambit.
The Mumbai Grahak Panchayat’s (MGP), a leading consumer forum, chairman Shirish Deshpande had demanded last year in July to the authority to bring housing portals like housing.com, magicbricks.com, makaan.com and various other such websites, involved in real estate businesses, be compulsorily registered with the regulatory body to make them accountable for their property transactions.
Deshpande said that the demand was treated as a complaint by MahaRERA and all the parties were called for a hearing. However, no order has been passed yet.
The consumer forum had made the demand considering the fact that these portals are being referred by homebuyers most of the times while looking for properties.
However, a MahaRERA official is of the opinion that these web portals engaging in real estate activities gives only information, but do not take any commission if a property is purchased by the buyer, therefore, these portals cannot be treated as real estate brokers.
Further justifying this, the official gave an example of how several newspapers display real estate advertisements questioning that they too should be treated as agents?
He asserted that ultimately it is the homebuyers who have to be more careful and vigilant while taking a decision especially while purchasing any kind of property.
On this, Deshpande remarked, “It could be an opinion of an individual. But a proper hearing was conducted by the MahaRERA on this subject and now we are anxiously waiting for the order.”
Moreover, Deshpande pointed out although the homebuyers may not be directly paying to these portals, the builders who have their real estate projects must be paying money to display their advertisements on their sites. So that means they are getting money from somewhere.
Apart from this, Deshpande stated, “The main role of MahaRERA is to regulate the real estate sector and since the real estate agents facilitate the sale this was extensively argued at the hearing, and being an adjudicating authority it is expected to pass an order on the matter based on the contention made by both the parties. It cannot remain silent.”
As on June 12, around 20,313 real estate brokers have registered with MahaRERA. Moreover, as per the provision, builders can market their projects only through these registered brokers. However, there is no such rule in place for online real estate portals until now.
