Building a house is a mutual work of the builder, government and the buyers. A civil engineer plays its role in designing and constructing the house, and once he does his job, it is the buyer who has the last say if he wants to buy the house or not. If the house looks good, a buyer would love to buy the house, but there are other certain things that must be checked before buying the house from a builder. This blog post is about those important things that I have learned after buying my own flat but should have known them before.
Check if the builder has got the project registered in the RERA website of the concerned state. For example, I bought a flat in Punjab, I checked the Punjab RERA website to see the project name under the registered projects list. It is very important that you do it because this will probably save you from any kind of possible cheating and fraud.
Things to check in the builder’s RERA profile:
(A)
See if the project registration period has not expired. If it is expired, then you must avoid buying the flat.
(B)
See if there is a specified format of ‘Agreement of Sale’ in the uploaded documents section. You must insist to use this agreement format to finalise a deal with the builder. It has been seen that the builder asks you to sign the agreement as per his own terms and clauses which most of the times would be partial towards you. On the other hand, the format given by RERA will have the clauses which will give you all the rights that RERA has to offer to the buyers.
If you sign an agreement different from the one given by the RERA it is highly likely that builder would harass you in some way, like forfeiting your booking amount in case of cancellation of the deal, asking you for unfair maintenance charges, having partial interest rates for compensation in case of delay in possession of the flat etc.
(C)
If the project is shown as ‘completed’ in the RERA website then check for the completion and occupancy certificates. They would be uploaded in the website and hence you must check it. Remember that even if you get the registry papers of the flat you are still at risk. Until and unless you have the occupancy and completion certificates you are at the risk of losing your flat. You want to know why!? Please read about Campa Cola building in Mumbai.
(D)
(E)
(F)
Once everything is okay, only then you must invest your money.
Thanks!
