RERA to exclude projects below 500 square metres

Property buyers seeking an investment in bungalows and row houses below 500 sq mt will now have to give a second thought to it. Even as RERA is expected to protect property buyers from developers’ wrongful act, it will not protect projects under 500 sq metre. This means houses under 5000 sq ft will not come under RERA committee scanner.

Property owners of projects that are less than 500 sq metre will now have to worry as the disputes with their developer will not be heard by the RERA committee unless the project fits their criteria.

Similarly, developers of these projects will not be penalised by the committee for any wrongful acts and they will not have to upload their projects on the website. Members said that such projects are very old structures and are not above 3-4 floors and are hence ruled out for now.

Vasant Prabhu, committee member, told Free Press Journal, “These projects have individual disputes and it takes several hearings to come to a solution. We currently want to focus on new projects that are under construction or have just initiated the work. For such cases, there are authorities like Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act where such issues are still being heard.”

Buyers will have to fit in the criteria for the project to be uploaded on RERA. This is a basic criterion as the project should be RERA certified for the committee to look into the matter. The act also focuses on projects that are without an occupation certificate. An OC is issued by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to signify that the building is complete as per the approved plan and is in compliance with law without which it is difficult to get water and power connections. This further rules out disputes of decade old buildings. However, the committee was recently considering to include such cases under the act as well.

However, Anand Gupta, former secretary of Builders Association of India (BAI), said it will not affect projects that are below 500 sq mt. “The act says projects below 500 sq metre or have less than eight flats will not be included under RERA. Buyers interesting in bungalow projects do not have to worry unless the project involves more than one house. For instance, if a project has several bungalows, which will be more than 500 sq metre, out of which an individual bungalow has a dispute than that will be heard by RERA committee. The committee considers the entire project and not an individual’s house area.”