Views on RERA in India

By Madhusudhan G., Chairman and Managing Director, Sumadhura Group

RERA is still a work-in progress and the full impact of it would be achieved only in the long run. With major consolidation taking place within the industry, the unprofessional, fly-by-night operators would be sooner than later weeded out from the system, making the real estate industry a level-playing field for the more organized and transparent players to function in. Section 32 of RERA central act mandates creation of a single window system for ensuring time bound project approvals and clearances for timely completion of the project.

What RERA has achieved is one side of the coin. It has protected the homebuyers by providing a dedicated tribunal for addressing their concerns and further empowering them. For the developers, it has not ensured any time bound approval mechanism which has a huge impact and burden on the project cost and also cost to the end user.

The concerned State Governments or RERA authority have not done anything towards accomplishing this.  If the Government is committed for the growth and promotion of a healthy, transparent, efficient and competitive real estate sector, we feel the implementation of RERA and creation of a single window system for ensuring time bound project approvals and clearances for timely completion of the project should go hand in hand.

The government authorities responsible for approvals and no objections should have been brought into the ambit of RERA, without which RERA is going to be a huge burden to the real estate sector.

Several stringent measures within Act like compulsory registration, wherein every real estate project (where the total area to be developed exceeds 500 sq.mts. or more than 8 apartments) must be registered with its respective state’s RERA; Continual disclosure by promoters, title representation, standardization of sale agreement and setting up of a reserve account ensure that proper checks and balances are in place to ensure seamless operation. All these measures are in the interest of a single stake holder, the home buyer of the entire real estate ecosystem but the other stake holder, the developer is completely ignored. At least now the Governments and RERA authority should focus on this for the promotion of healthy growth of real estate sector.