My RERA Experience
In this post, I am not going to share the pros and cons of RERA. I am sure it’s a debatable topic and many people have various opinions. I am going to write only on my personal experience of RERA (Real Estate Regulatory Act) as a technical director of a real estate firm.
The last few months have been of turbulence for all the real estate companies around India. Firstly, it was demonetization, then it was New NBC 2016 which came as a bang, followed by RERA and finally GST. It is like that hurdle race, in which you cross one hurdle and then there is a new one on your way. Good or bad, you need to cross it, without stumbling, to reach the finishing line.
RERA became applicable from the month of May 2017, but even before that it had made headlines for various reasons. After much hue and cry on developers leaving the buyers in lurch by not delivering their houses on time, government finally decided to create a regulatory body which will keep a tab on the developers so that they cannot default. The real estate firms have been asked to share lot of their private data into public domain in the name of transparency. But will all this help? Only time will tell.
Being the technical director, with a team of Project Coordinators (all architects), I was asked to provide the carpet area details of all the projects. We are doing projects across India and so we had to provide the data for the various states.
Her, one need to understand the various types of areas that goes in a Real Estate project. There is a carpet area, then there is a covered area and finally a super area. The super area is the area on which the customer is charged. The relationship is as follows; there is a carpet area: an area in which you can lay a carpet (including separate balcony area); add wall areas and you will get a covered area. Add the areas for facilities (both at floor level and basement level) and you will get the final area. So far the real estate was dealing only with super area but now carpet area was also introduced and one need to link the two, thanks to RERA.
So, first thing was to understand the definition of Carpet area as per the ACT. After a couple of joint meetings with the legal team and after lot of deliberations, the definition was extracted and circulated to all the project coordinators so that they could start preparing the data. It may sound simple but was definitely not. There are 1000s of units in a project and calculating area for each unit was a very time consuming job. However, the dedicated project coordinators finally managed it and all the data was collated.
Then came the challenge. Two days before the final submission date, the management suddenly decided that the technical team is going to be responsible for filing of RERA for all the states. We are currently developing projects in four states; Haryana, Chandigarh, UP and Gujarat. It was like all hell break loose for the entire technical team because RERA is not about putting the areas. It was only a small (yet important) part of the entire set of documents. Just to give an idea of the documents that were required, I am listing down the few documents that we finally submitted. It includes,
- The company details
- Land schedule and land documents
- Promoter’s Background
- ITR, Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss statement for the last three years
- Financial Reports and Encumbrance Certificates
- Approvals and Certificates
- Sanctioned Plans
- Location details including latitude and longitude details
- Performa’s for allottee
- Unit area details including carpet areas of each units
- Parking details
- Consultant and contractor list
- Sold status of each unit
Besides there were other forms also that needs to be filed up and must be authorized by the directors of the company before the submission.
Other departments of the company, including sales, legal and finance are also required in preparing and providing the data. Soon the big conference room was occupied and all the representatives of all the departments were locked in it. Papers started flying and additional photocopier was installed to meet the demand. The bosses were shouting and the juniors were running around. There were breaks only for lunch and dinner. In all it was a complete pandemonium.
For Punjab and Haryana, hard copy of the files was accepted but in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat only soft copies were to be uploaded. While another senior member took responsibility of UP, I decided to take up Gujarat as it seemed more organized. There was more clarity on the website and we managed to collate all the data by Sunday, 30th July noon. Just to mention that July 31st was the last day of filing the application.
The Gujarat project was divided into 2 phases and hence we had to upload to different set of data twice. The first page had basic company details and was uploaded very fast. The problem started with the second page. After all the details were filled up and the next button was pressed, the screen went blank. Uh oh! A refresh of the page took us back to Stage 1.
After two attempts, and with no luck and frustrated, we decided to take a break and have our lunch.
When we came back from lunch we realized that there were two additional circular on the website asking for more data on the server. We thought that the server must be down because of some back-end work.
In few minutes, we started the process again but every time the screen was going blank after stage 2. We decided to try again at night but it was of no use.
Next day, was the last day (as usual for the architects) of the submission. We reached office and started the process again. Still the same story. The admin guy, from the Gujarat site, was sent to the RERA office at Gandhinagar TPO. We talked to the person on telephone and he confirmed that there is no issue with the website. He even further said that he will help us in uploading the data if we come over and meet him. It was 12:45 pm.
In ten minutes, it was decided that we need to fly to Gandhinagar ASAP. The flight was at 4 pm. In 15 minutes, we left office. On our way to airport, I went home and packed my bags. After a small traffic jam at Dhaula Kuan, we managed to reach airport at 2:45 pm. Phew! Managed to check in within the time limit. The Project Coordinator from Gujarat was all the time with me in this hour of crisis.
We had lunch at the airport and then it was announced that the flight is late by half an hour. The meeting with the Authority Person was becoming bleak now. We decided to try uploading again with some bogus data. First time it didn’t work but as the announcement of boarding happened, we cracked it. We managed to move to Stage 3. Though not 100% sure but it gave us some satisfaction when we boarded the flight. Both of us fell asleep in the flight.
As soon as we got down, the admin person took us to the RERA Gandhinagar TPO. Ironically, it was just by the side of CBI Office. Anyways, as we entered the building we met the Authority Person whom we were supposed to meet, leaving the building. The person was very decent and told us to meet the technical team from a private organization who had developed the software. He left and we rushed to meet the concerned people on the first floor of the same building.
There were two guys, young and energetic and very professional. They understood our problem and reloaded the Page 2 again in front of us. Though on the first attempt it went blank but after re-uploading the data in a little twisted format the thing worked. We thanked him and headed towards the site office to finish the rest of the process.
We reached office. Took a cup of tea and started the data upload for Phase I of the project. When we reached the payment stage, we called the account person, in Delhi and gave him the details to make the payment. He called us back in 10 minutes that he is unable to pay from the office account as the merchant has not been linked to the site.
First hiccup! We decided that we will go ahead with the personal credit card of the accounts guy. The total fees was close to 3 lacs. As the person decided to start the process of Credit Card we decided to start with Phase II data upload. By the time the accounts guy was ready with his Credit Card, we were ready with the both the data in two separate browser tab. We paid both the fees and received the acknowledgement number. We immediately informed the team in Delhi in the WhatsApp group and congratulatory messages started coming in. Job well done!
But hold on….my Project Coordinator suddenly realized that something is missing. How come we have received the same acknowledgement number for both the Phases? That too on the same email ID? And then we realized the mistake. Since we started with Phase II before the payment of Phase I, the browser automatically replaced some data of Phase I with Phase II. At least the data in Phase II is correct. But for Phase I, we have to do it again.
We started the process again. Meanwhile, I talked to the team in Delhi and I was given the credit card details of the company account. As we reached the payment stage again we put in the company credit card details and the transaction failed. Frustrated we called the team again in Delhi and asked them to arrange another Personal Credit Card with a 3 Lac limit. A senior member of the organization gave his Credit Card details to accounts team in Delhi and they started the payment process. The amount was debited from his account and we received the payment details through mail. We put the payment receipt details and (oh no!) the server crashed again.
With two failures on our belt, we were now completely exhausted both mentally and physically. I think the team in Delhi were exhausted by now. We finally decided to meet the same IT guys next day morning and finally moved towards the hotel. With a heavy heart the car dropped me to the hotel at 12 midnight. Checked in and crashed in the bed but realized that I am unable to sleep peacefully with the burden of the unfinished work.
Next day the car picked me from hotel and I reached site. My Project Coordinator and the admin guy were already there, ready with all the print outs. We reached the Gandhinagar TPO as soon as it opened. The IT person joined us in 10 minutes and we explained all the confusing issues with great difficulty. The guy was very professional. He first checked the Phase II data on his server and confirmed that it was alright. He then asked us to re-upload the data and then he linked the payment done on the previous night with the data. He then conveyed that he will need some more days for the refunding the additional fees of Phase I that we paid by mistake.
Finally, we came out successfully uploading the data of RERA documents and had a cup of tea. We finally felt jubilated and relaxed. But then someone said, “ Arre yeh toe humne sirf admission form bhara hain; exam to aage dena hain! (Hey! We have just filled the admission form; the exam is yet to start!).
I took the first flight out and this time I was smiling all the way thinking of ‘My RERA Experience.”
