It is now a mandate for the city’s real estate developers to register their projects under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (RERA) Act 2016, after the Assam Government notified the Act as Assam Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules 2017 in May this year.
Town Planner of Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) and RERA-incharge, JS Kakoty said, “RERA is a quasi judicial authority and all the ongoing and future real estate projects have to be registered under it,” adding that RERA is the authority to address the issues between the purchaser and the builders/promoters.
If a builder has 10 projects, all the projects will have to be registered under RERA individually.
There are four elements under the RERA Act - RERA authority, real estate project promoter, realtor (agents who sell property) and the purchasers.
Under the RERA Act, a RERA authority comprising two members – a retired judge and a real estate expert - has to be formed. The Assam government is yet to form the authority and till then the GMDA Town Planner has been appointed as the RERA incharge.
Any ongoing project without occupancy certificate will have to come under RERA.
After the projects are registered under RERA, the promoters and realtors will have to stick to the promises made in the agreements with the purchaser. Any promoter/realtor failing to fulfil the promises made while selling the project can be punished by the RERA authority.
Kakoty said that even while advertising the project, the promoters/realtors should make sure that the advertising claims are followed in the project or else purchasers could file complaints against the project owners for not fulfilling the claims in the advertisements.
The RERA rules are beneficial even to the promoters. If the purchasers do not make payments on time, they will have to pay 2% extra on the prime lending rate of the bank.
Only one city project registered under RERA till date
Even though the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA) authority is yet to be formed, one real estate project is already registered under RERA.
A source in GMDA said, “25 projects have applied but only Shine Seven Developers’ affordable housing project Shine Sansaar at Azara, Guwahati have received deemed registration under RERA.”
After the Assam government notified the RERA rules in May 2017, the registration process started on 10th September 2017.
According to RERA rules, if a registration request is not processed within 30 days, the applicant will automatically receive deemed registration; the same happened with Shine Seven Developers, the GMDA source said.
The source said that once the RERA authority is formed, the registration work will be a very smooth process and the applicants will not have to wait for deemed registration.
One of the partners of Shine Seven Developers, Gaurav Jaina, explained that they received the information on 9th September this year that projects have to be registered under RERA.
The promoters applied on 14th September and received the registration in the first week of December. Jaina said that the documentation process is pretty lengthy as all the required documents have to be submitted. He explained that if other papers like no objection certificates (NOCs) from GMDA, and other permissions from other departments are availed than RERA registration is very easy.
Jaina stressed that there is no corruption in the RERA registration process and the Act will be useful for the Promoters as well as the consumers.
