Regulator Required in Real Estate in India

The Woe of The Residents of Arborea Luxury Homes, Dehra Dun

Preamble

About ten years back when Uttarakhand was carved out from the geographical territory of Uttar Pradesh and Dehra Dun designated its Capital, albeit temporarily, there was a flurry of real estate business and construction activity which continues to remain and prosper. The large swathes of mango / litchi orchards and agricultural land in the municipal limits and adjoining villages respectively, were converted into residential / commercial property by the MDDA, putting a premium upon land and making property prices sky rocket. The city of Dehra Dun became a haven for real estate sharks and to accommodate the growing demand for more dwelling units and commercial infrastructure, property owners inked joint development agreements with developers and builders to meet the requirement. The elsewhere present housing / living culture of residential apartments embraced the city and multi storied residential complex sprung up in and the periphery of Dehra Dun. The landscape of the city is changing fast and the open spaces of yester years have become concrete monstrosities. The price for non sustainable development. This comes at a cost and impinges upon a symbiotic relation ship with nature, affecting the quality of living. The city will fast be bursting at its seams with an implosion of burgeoning building infrastructure, necessitated by the trappings of State Government Offices, making its presence in the midst of residential / commercial areas. To make matters worse, the narrow width roads which earlier catered to the needs of the town and its modest manageable traffic are now in a state of virtual chaos, making movement of vehicles and their parking a cause of much anxiety. Road rage, which earlier was an unknown emotion to Doonites, has now grasped public psyche to throw up untoward behavior by people, at grave cost to the safety and dignity of its senior members, who are its distinguishing feature.   

Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd

It was in this ground reality that M/s Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, a company having its registered office at K-1 Green Park Main, New Delhi, went into a joint development agreement with about ten land owners south of village Tarla Nagal on Shastradhara – Mussoorie Diversion road, to build and develop a housing project, Arborea Luxury Homes. The project is beautifully located on a commanding piece of land overlooking a rivulet and in proximity of the Sai Baba Temple on Rajpur road. Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd has an envious reputation in the development and building of commercial and residential structures and has to its credit lacs of constructed floor space successfully completed, mainly in the National Capital Region of Delhi. Moreover, the Managing Director of the Company, Mr. Lalit Jain being a man of conviction, who abides by the dictum of business best practice and is under girded by an ethical attitude remains the company’s USP . With an assurance such as this and Mr. Lalit Jain’s reputation as promulgated in the marketing brochure and website, a testimony of honesty and uprightness in business dealing, prompted many an unsuspecting buyer to invest in Conscient Infrastructure’s maiden housing venture in Dehra Dun, thoughtfully named Arborea Luxury Homes.

Arborea Luxury Homes

The project which started in 2008 is still incomplete, even as owners / occupants moved in commencing from March 2011. The complex which has 12 towers of four floors each with two apartments on a floor and in two categories viz Premium and 3 BHK comprises 96 apartments. Of these, about 30 have been taken possession of and about 18 are presently occupied. The property which was exorbitantly priced at its launch in comparison to the then prevailing market rates, is slowly emerging to be a damp squib, given the problems the owners are living with every day. There are major design and construction flaws which are an architectural and workmanship blunder respectively, making the presumptuous claims of Conscient look pathetic, to say the least. It defies one’s common sense that in a place like Dehra Dun where monsoons are intense and remain for four months, no sunshades have been provided over the windows and the balconies. Thus, making the carpet area of the apartments vulnerable to rain water, and causing tremendous inconvenience to the residents. In addition, the water proofing of the buildings is suspect and probably sub standard. Not only that, the sliding glass windows and doors and kitchen door and window have not been provided with fly proofing arrangements, which precludes air circulation, when these are closed to prevent flies and mosquitoes from flying into the apartment from the outside. The living space gets suffocating and unhealthy. The standard of plumbing is a nightmare and seepages from concealed pipelines are an eternal problem which the residents have to contend with on a regular basis. Moreover, the drain in the dry / utility balcony is perpetually chocked and the slope in the bathrooms is inadequate for water to flow out on its own. And this primarily because of the cost cutting shenanigan of the architect by providing insufficient thickness to the flooring, which does not enable sufficient circumference pipes to be embedded and a slope to be given. The stupidity is compounded further by not providing a trap door to clean and clear the chocking kitchen drain, there by necessitating the breaking of the concealed drain chute, every time a blockage occurs. The quality of the material used in the modular kitchen is probably of the lowest end in the market and remains an apology for it. A clear case of commitment deficit. The energy consumption of most occupied apartments was inordinately high in January 2012 (varying between Rs11, 000 to Rs 5,000), leaving a big question mark on the integrity of the electric meters and the associated equipment, including the soft ware installed for the purpose. Given the construction design of the apartments and an all glass look, security assumes an added importance in the complex. However, this seems to have been either ignored or else overlooked, as the staircase to the apartments is easily accessible from the side of the ground level planter, even while a biometric access door has been provided to control and restrict unauthorized entry from below. Inanity at its best. It could not have been more comical than this, when one learns that though there are numerous power points for a TV connection in all the rooms, one can watch only one channel at any one time, even on different set top boxes. Invest on 3 to 5 TV sets to watch only one channel programme. Brilliant!

In an ingenious move to force the maintenance services to be provided only by a business partner of Conscient, M/s Massoorie Himalayan Resorts Pvt Ltd (Mco), the owners were / are forced to sign a Maintenance Agreement on a non judicial stamp paper, bequeathing this right to it. The monthly maintenance charges which are very steep Rs 3,400/- per month, leave the owners with very little choice in the matter. It is needless to speak about the quality of the service provided for the money charged, as it is lamentable. The security service engaged by Mco is inadequate and professionally challenged, keeping the residents in a state of perpetual anxiety about their well being. The arboriculture of the complex is in keeping with the poor understanding of what it implies and one gets to see a surfeit of palms planted all over in a drab monochrome, of only green.

The commitment made by Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd in the Allotment and Maintenance Agreement are far from fulfilled and leave much to be desired. Some of these, which are non existent as of now, are -:

a)      Clubhouse with Pool Table and Card Room, Spa with steam, Top of the line Gymnasium, Swimming Pool, Wi Fi inter net Connectivity

b)      Provision of Cafeteria, Mini Convenience Store, Kid’s Play Area

c)      Insurance of the Building  

High Handedness of Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd

The owners of apartment(s) in Arborea Luxury Homes, convinced that they had been short changed by the grandstanding claims of Conscient, decided to form a duly registered Resident Welfare Association (RWA) to represent their interests, collectively. Having done so and formed a Society under the rules as encapsulated in the Society Registration Act 1860, the RWA wrote to Conscient and tried to engage with them in a spirit of mutual understanding and bonhomie, to engage and resolve the existing issues, to the satisfaction of all. This evoked a rather imperious response from them and they refused to recognize a duly registered Welfare Association. It is indeed a travesty of our business ethics that there is no regulator in the real estate sector who can intervene and initiate punitive action against defaulters. While the consumer and civil law courts exist, they are very time consuming and the compensation which accrues to the deponent / aggrieved party is not commensurate to the angst it causes to the aggrieved party.

There fore a stratagem which can be effective in such cases is to hurt the builder / developer and in the instant case Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, by making holes in their acclaimed public reputation and bringing them to a state of commercial / repuation grief. When the word goes around that a builder / developer has not delivered on what was promised during the Agreement, their professional standing takes a beating which they can ill afford.

When people get wise about the various subterfuge, which this breed of people employ in marketing their product and at the outset inveigle the buyer with false promises of delivering quality , will there be a possibility of things improving and getting better for the customer / consumer. The courts of Uttarakhand may well sit on judgment of such cases, wherein the customer in the real estate sector has been unjustly cheated by builders / developers, who continue to make huge sums of money at the cost of the naïve and credulous buyer. The media must support the cause of the buyer who has always been at the receiving end of such intriguing and unfortunate transactions. Those who are planning to buy property in the various Housing Societies, which have sprung up and are coming up in Dehra Dun in the future, need to be wary of what they are getting into. Be rest assured that all the allotment and maintenance agreements which are required to be signed by the buyer are disproportionately loaded in favor of the builder / developer and would require legal intervention for redressal.

Brigadier (S D Dangwal)

+919410900051