About a thousand housing projects in the state, most of them in Bengaluru, are under the scanner of the state’s Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera), for failing to register with the regulator and ignoring their notices.
As a result, customers of flats at these residential projects will lose their right to approach the Rera if they face a problem with the seller. Rera polices only those projects that are registered with it.
The real estate regulator has put out a list of such projects on its website — this list includes two housing projects by the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) too. The real estate authority has warned home buyers: “The public is hereby informed that these projects are not registered with Rera and are under investigation. The public is warned that dealing with these projects is at their own risk as these are not registered with Rera.”
In the past two years since the inception of the authority, Rera officials have zeroed in on about 1,700 unregistered housing projects. “Identifying unregistered projects is an elaborate process. We prepared the list based on complaints from the public and by scrutinising media advertisements of housing projects. We then verified the information and issued notices,” KS Latha Kumari, secretary at Rera, said.
While about 1,075 developers have replied to the regulator’s notices, Rera officials have found only 700 replies satisfactory. “About 300 replies are not okay and we have asked them to submit additional documents — however, they have not come back yet,” the secretary said. Promoters of 712 projects did not respond to repeated notices at all.
Although officials admit that not all projects in the list of 1,000 that are on Rera’s radar could be invalid and they may have even received occupancy certificates, officials ask what prevents them from providing clarification or register with Rera. The challenge now is to track these unregistered projects that are mostly from lesser-known developers, who in many cases are not even available to contact on phone or email.
Officials say that though the awareness level about Rera is comparatively higher in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mangaluru, it is abysmally low in other cities. “Registration has happened to a large extent in major cities. About 3,520 projects have registered so far and a majority of them are from Bengaluru. But we need to create awareness in smaller towns where people seem to be not aware of the Rera Act at all,” Kumari said.
