The 14 spokes of RERA’s protective umbrella

Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants

The Indian real estate industry, particularly the residential sector, was in the past correctly characterized as being unregulated and unorganized with unreasonable project delays and poor quality of construction being definitive aspects.

The arrival of the Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) in March 2016 brought in a paradigm shift in the sector and metamorphosed it into a more mature, systematic and regulated one.

RERA came into force on May 1, 2017, and is meant to be a homebuyer-friendly regime which will address their grievances and promote transparency, efficiency, financial discipline and accountability in the sector.

Indeed, buying a home is not only the most cherished dream for many Indians but also one of the biggest long-term financial commitment in the buyers’ lifetime.

Considering this, there are 14 important guidelines incorporated in the RERA umbrella to prevent unscrupulous players from raining on consumers’ homebuying plans:

1.  Enforcing timely delivery of projects

In case of project delays,

Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants

Why RERA is still not a nation-wide market force

Many state governments have been lax in implementing RERA. There are various forces at play – the primary one being an aversion to change.

RERA was conceived to change the entire status quo of how real estate is designed, developed and sold in India. It intends to put paid to fly-by-night players – both developers and brokers – who have held the real estate market to ransom all these years.

While the larger organized developers and consultancies have welcomed and embraced RERA for the transparency and regulation it brings to the market, the unorganized segment – players who are not happy with RERA because it seriously impacts their questionable business models – far outnumber the organized one.

In a democracy, the ‘majority vote’, whether spoken out loud or implied by lack of cooperation, wields weight. This majority vote is slowing down the process of RERA’s nation-wide deployment in the shape and to the extent which the Centre intends. Moreover, individual states also have always had the right come up with their own set of rules.