A MahaRERA of hope for redevelopment

Mumbai
With a proposal to include redevelopment of housing societies within the ambit of MahaRERA, its Chief Gautam Chatterjee, in an exclusive chat with Times Property, lays down his vision of making the real estate industry a clean business by tweaking the old system.

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Are you one of the lakhs of people who feel a wave of fear wash over you when the conversation leans toward redevelopment of your society due to the infamous reputation the process has gained in Mumbai or even Maharashtra? The state government, too, has been grappling with the same issue and recently received the answer from a source they had not yet considered – the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), popularly known as MahaRERA.

MahaRERA Chief Gautam Chatterjee has made a proposition to the state government asking them to include redevelopment of housing societies under its ambit.

MahaRERA has been lauded as one of RERA's best implementation bodies among its contemporaries, due to its swift decision-making. In 2019, it disposed of 2,945 out of 4,490 cases that appeared before the authority and its adjudicating officers.

Chatterjee seems confident of MahaRERA venturing into the re-development space and opines that it is the need of the hour. "Many of us might know people who have fallen victim to the redevelopment process. There are thousands and lakhs of individuals in the city who have not been given their redeveloped homes, either because the builder has filed for bankruptcy or has just gone missing," he says.

Pointing out to how it affects many senior citizens who are stuck in these situations, he further says, "They tend to rely on the rent that the builder gives them as income; a few years after the builder shifts them into these transit homes, he stops providing the rent, and in this situation, they cannot survive without the income nor are they able to put together enough money for rent."

Chatterjee feels that MahaRERA already has the tools to deal with the developer community (in terms of qualification and compliance) and this acquired knowledge would be useful for cities like Mumbai, which has space constraints. He explains, "We definitely have the experience, and given the fact that Mumbai is a city starved for space, redevelopment is the only way to revive the older part of the city. We asked the Maharashtra government to help by updating and tweaking that part of the regulation to include redevelopment projects under the Co-operative Act that automatically qualifies it to be considered under RERA."

Abhijeet Prabhu, 45, has been staying on rent in Goregaon for the past six years as his house has been stuck in redevelopment. "I regret going in for redevelopment; we own a house in Mumbai, and yet we are forced to live on rent. In hindsight, I should have sold the house and used the money to buy a new one in the city, even if I wasn't able to get one in the western suburbs itself; at least it would have been a house to call our own," laments Prabhu. He adds, "Some of my neighbours and I moved out of the transit place that the builder put us up in as it was just not liveable. We are now shelling out the rent money from our pockets."

What will MahaRERA do?
It will verify the developer, and see if they do indeed have the experience and ability to enter into a redevelopment project;
Make the developer comply if a house owner raises the issue of non-compliance of rent;
Make sure that the before and after square feet is acceptable to both the parties and is adhered to.

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Source: content.magicbricks.com