In the past I blogged about my experience of selling my old house, shortlisting a new one, getting a home loan and finally buying the dream house where I stay currently. Thanks for all the feedback regarding my earlier posts. Now that I am settled in the new house I thought it might be a good idea to write a bit about the experience of living in a big housing society. These are a few simple issues which are relevant to most new / 2-3 year projects which have been completed in Mumbai.
Quality of construction:
No matter what the reputation of the builder, you will NEVER get world class construction. Although my builder is a smaller guy, I spoke to friends who bough houses in complexes constructed by Rahejas, Hiranandanis and Runwals, and all of them had the same issues. In the age of increasing interest rates and high costs of conducting business most builders cut a few corners here and there. Most try to do it in a manner which is not very visible. One year down the line you will have peeling paint in your house, a few leakages here and there, nothing serious which threatens the building structure but lots of small issues which will need to be addressed in the long, if not short term.
Most builders will send maintainence people to attend to your complaints (at least till the time the society is formed), but these people will just do a cover up job which will mask your problem and not actually solve it. The aim of the builder here is to procrastinate as much as possible and avoid buyers till the time the society is registered and he hands over the day to day functioning of the building to them.
Nothing much you can really do here, if you are still looking at houses and close to shortlisting one, please insist that the builder fixes all the visible flaws BEFORE you get possession of the house. If you have already bought the house the your best bet is to highlight these flaws to the builder AND the provisional / managing committee of the building society, you will need to do a lot of follow up to actually get some work done.
Parking:
The thumb rule here is that most builder force you to buy 1 parking at least for a 2bhk house and 2 for 3.5/4 bhk houses. If you want more than one parking while buying a 2bhk house, the builder will discourage you by saying that you can buy it later or that some open parking is available. Here lies the catch, the builder has limited parking spaces for sale and by hoarding this precious commodity he is trying to maximize returns for himself. When you actually approach him later on for that additional space, he will quite a price 1.5-2 times the original rate.
Another common problem you will face is that the open parking (which is supposed to be free to all residents / visitors) is sometimes much smaller that what was actually committed, because the builder hardly earns any money from this he is not really interested is providing this facility. A scarier version of this problem is when your builder runs out of covered / basement parkings and starts selling open parking spaces. Technically this is illegal according to BMC, but rarely is any action taken against builders. The only option here is that you and your managing committee take this issue up with the builder aggressively and threaten legal action. I don't predict a very high success rate with this action but it worth taking a chance.
Society Formation / Managing Committee:
Am sure most of your will agree that the most entertaining part of living in a large building complex is the society meetings. Usually when people start coming to stay in the building/s the residents form a provisional committee amongst themselves to coordinate with the builders office on various issues and to pass on information to other residents.
Most of the times, the initial committee will find itself at loggerheads with the builder. This is mainly because the builder takes advance maintainence for 12 / 18 / 24 months from you at a particular rate but the actual maintainence cost is much lesser. Secondly in most cases this advance maintainence money is supposed to include property tax for the first year at least. When the committee brings this to the builders notice, he will come up with some opaque explaination which usually does not make any sense. Then the builder will question the validity of the committee and ask if they enjoy the full confidence of the members of the society. I saw the same script being repeated at 3 different building complexes.
Most common area where the builder cons you are:
- Not paying maintainence for unsold flats
- Not paying / negotiating the property tax with BMC and leaving the residents with a high bill in the end.
- Claiming that the money for maintainence is over and trying to pass on all responsibility to the society.
- Not paying any maintainence / tax for the flat in the building which he uses as a sales / admin office.
In the end there is nothing really which you can do to force the builders hand if he has decided to screw you. Your only recourse is complaining aggressively to your society and maybe taking legal action which will drag on for ages. The bigger builders will be slightly more careful here because they have other upcoming projects, so they would not want negative feedback from present ones to affect them. However that does not mean that they will be completely honest and fulfill all their promises. It is in the DNA of a a builder in Mumbai to take buyers for a ride and he will do so. This is simply because the laws and the administration in Maharashtra are completely skewed in favour of the builder's lobby.
Let this not discourage you, if you keep your eyes and ears open and fight for your rights you will end up with a decent deal.
Hope this advice helps. Feedback most welcome.
Quality of construction:
No matter what the reputation of the builder, you will NEVER get world class construction. Although my builder is a smaller guy, I spoke to friends who bough houses in complexes constructed by Rahejas, Hiranandanis and Runwals, and all of them had the same issues. In the age of increasing interest rates and high costs of conducting business most builders cut a few corners here and there. Most try to do it in a manner which is not very visible. One year down the line you will have peeling paint in your house, a few leakages here and there, nothing serious which threatens the building structure but lots of small issues which will need to be addressed in the long, if not short term.
Most builders will send maintainence people to attend to your complaints (at least till the time the society is formed), but these people will just do a cover up job which will mask your problem and not actually solve it. The aim of the builder here is to procrastinate as much as possible and avoid buyers till the time the society is registered and he hands over the day to day functioning of the building to them.
Nothing much you can really do here, if you are still looking at houses and close to shortlisting one, please insist that the builder fixes all the visible flaws BEFORE you get possession of the house. If you have already bought the house the your best bet is to highlight these flaws to the builder AND the provisional / managing committee of the building society, you will need to do a lot of follow up to actually get some work done.
Parking:
The thumb rule here is that most builder force you to buy 1 parking at least for a 2bhk house and 2 for 3.5/4 bhk houses. If you want more than one parking while buying a 2bhk house, the builder will discourage you by saying that you can buy it later or that some open parking is available. Here lies the catch, the builder has limited parking spaces for sale and by hoarding this precious commodity he is trying to maximize returns for himself. When you actually approach him later on for that additional space, he will quite a price 1.5-2 times the original rate.
Another common problem you will face is that the open parking (which is supposed to be free to all residents / visitors) is sometimes much smaller that what was actually committed, because the builder hardly earns any money from this he is not really interested is providing this facility. A scarier version of this problem is when your builder runs out of covered / basement parkings and starts selling open parking spaces. Technically this is illegal according to BMC, but rarely is any action taken against builders. The only option here is that you and your managing committee take this issue up with the builder aggressively and threaten legal action. I don't predict a very high success rate with this action but it worth taking a chance.
Society Formation / Managing Committee:
Am sure most of your will agree that the most entertaining part of living in a large building complex is the society meetings. Usually when people start coming to stay in the building/s the residents form a provisional committee amongst themselves to coordinate with the builders office on various issues and to pass on information to other residents.
Most of the times, the initial committee will find itself at loggerheads with the builder. This is mainly because the builder takes advance maintainence for 12 / 18 / 24 months from you at a particular rate but the actual maintainence cost is much lesser. Secondly in most cases this advance maintainence money is supposed to include property tax for the first year at least. When the committee brings this to the builders notice, he will come up with some opaque explaination which usually does not make any sense. Then the builder will question the validity of the committee and ask if they enjoy the full confidence of the members of the society. I saw the same script being repeated at 3 different building complexes.
Most common area where the builder cons you are:
- Not paying maintainence for unsold flats
- Not paying / negotiating the property tax with BMC and leaving the residents with a high bill in the end.
- Claiming that the money for maintainence is over and trying to pass on all responsibility to the society.
- Not paying any maintainence / tax for the flat in the building which he uses as a sales / admin office.
In the end there is nothing really which you can do to force the builders hand if he has decided to screw you. Your only recourse is complaining aggressively to your society and maybe taking legal action which will drag on for ages. The bigger builders will be slightly more careful here because they have other upcoming projects, so they would not want negative feedback from present ones to affect them. However that does not mean that they will be completely honest and fulfill all their promises. It is in the DNA of a a builder in Mumbai to take buyers for a ride and he will do so. This is simply because the laws and the administration in Maharashtra are completely skewed in favour of the builder's lobby.
Let this not discourage you, if you keep your eyes and ears open and fight for your rights you will end up with a decent deal.
Hope this advice helps. Feedback most welcome.
