The Real Estate Regulation Act (RERA) has come into effect from May 1. Nine states and five union territories have implemented RERA fully while 14 states and union territories have implemented only the draft policy.
In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Hariprakash Pandey, VP-Finance at Housing Development and Infrastructure (HDIL) spoke at length about RERA.
Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview.
Sonia: The efficiency of RERA has been questioned now because of the dilution of norms in certain states including Maharashtra and also the delays in issuing notifications etc, would this be a bit of a concern - from realtors' standpoint its fine but from an industry point?
A: I think with a landmark act in place and such a large coverage because this is a regulator which is not going to cover developer; it is also going to cover the real estate agents. In state of Maharashtra there are more than 10,000 developers across all cities which need to be regulated. So we need to give time to the government but we are happy to see that the website is up, the registration process has started and the regulator is very developer friendly. However, in our meetings and correspondences, they are even looking at some of the developer issues which cause delay in the project. So yes, there has been a slight delay but overall it is a landmark bill and over a period of time it should be good for both customers and developers.
Anuj: Any problems that you expect considering that there could be some teething issues, anything you see on the radar?
A: One of the key point is transition process but a three months time given for all the ongoing projects to get registered on the website and all the real estate brokers who are marketing projects for the companies need to get registered. So there would be some teething problem initially in terms of how we get the registration process whether the government administrative machinery is able to take so much of data in over a period of next three months. However, as I said largely it will bring transparency, in long-term it is going to benefit the sector. So short-term we may see some teething problem but long-term the benefits should be in.
Sonia: What has been done by the government at the moment to expedite the approval process?
A: As of now a lot of single window clearance scheme has initiated at least by Maharashtra government but on the ground the process is still slow because we have multiple agencies in Mumbai which grants approval. So we do not see a lot of steps been taken by the government but one aspect which is getting clearer is that a regulator is not only for the customer. It should also resolve the problem of developer for it to function smoothly. So that is where the hope comes in that once there is a regulator and once there is an appellate tribunal of the RERA, it should resolve some of the issues faced by the developers in terms of speedy approval process also. So we live in hope that RERA will also help the developers.
For entire interview, watch accompanying video.
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