India’s property law protects ‘buyers’

GREATER NOIDA, India: In 2010, Neena Nagpal and her husband spent their life savings on a flat outside Delhi that was never built. Now, a new law seeks to protect thousands of home buyers like her from unscrupulous property developers.

“The entire experience has been painful,” says the 54-year-old, whose husband recently died, leaving her to take care of their partially deaf son alone in a two-room house in a run-down part of the Indian capital.

“When you don’t walk what you talk, it really hurts us.”

From the mid-2000s onward, millions of middle class Indians eager to own their own homes poured cash into new building projects on the outskirts of major cities as a property boom took hold across the country.

Many were young workers in the burgeoning IT sector eager to break away from the traditional joint family set-up.

But the industry was riddled with problems and buyers were almost always the victims.

“What was shown and what was delivered was always different,” said Gulam Zia, executive director at real estate consultancy Knight Frank India.

“Developers got away with whatever they wanted and consumers always got a raw deal. Now a developer can’t hide anything and he can’t go back to his old habit of taking the consumer for a ride.”

Developers could face jail sentences of up to three years and substantial fines under the new law, which took effect on May 1 and applies to ongoing as well as new projects.

State governments will be responsible for keeping tabs on developers’ progress and ensuring they stick to their plans for everything from the number and size of apartments to the construction schedule.

Buyers’ money will have to be deposited in an escrow-like account and can only be used for the property they are investing in -- not to launch the developer’s next project.

If the flats are not delivered on time, the developer will have to pay the monthly interest on the buyers’ bank loans.