The real estate authority has also looked into projects where the date of completion has lapsed and the developers have not uploaded their completion certificates or the occupancy certificates on the UPRERA website.
UP RERA has identified 25 defaulting real estate developers in the state, issued recovery certificates against them and now plans to auction their properties to recover the homebuyers’ money amounting to over Rs 500 crore.
“We would start auctioning these properties in the next 15 days,” UP RERA member Balwinder Kumar told Moneycontrol.
“We have identified 25 builders who have defaulted in complying with our orders. Most of these orders have been issued over the last two years. We had received several complaints against these developers. Most of these complaints had to do with delay penalties and non-payment of amount due to buyers against the recovery certificates issued by the UP RERA,” he said.
The defaulting developers have been asked to provide information on the unsold inventory in their projects, both ongoing and completed, with details of the units tower/block/pocket-wise; area of the vacant land (unutilised land) in each of the projects along with the location on the map; unused FAR in each of the projects; details of the re-sale of the complainant’s unit along with the date and value of the resale.
Details of the assets and properties of the real estate company, including the land/plots owned by the company on which a project has yet to be launched, has also been sought.
A recovery certificate is issued against a real estate firm if it refuses to repay the amount for which it has defaulted as ordered by the court or a quasi-judicial body. The recovery amount is collected by the district administration.
“When builders do not repay to the buyers, we issue a recovery certificate and send it to the district magistrate for recovery but since district magistrates are busy with Covid-19 they could not recover the amounts against those RCs. We have, therefore, prepared a list of 25 developers who are major defaulters and have not complied with our orders,” he said.
UP RERA is planning to hold online meetings with all the developers starting August 18. “We will be asking them to give us a plan on how they are going to comply with the orders which we have issued,” he said.
UP RERA has also prepared a list of vacant, unencumbered properties lying with the developers. “We will also be asking these developers to send us their list of vacant properties and then we will auction them with the help of the district magistrate and recover the amount due to homebuyers. We hope to recover over Rs 500 crore from these properties,” he said.
It has requested the development authorities under whose jurisdiction the projects or the properties of the defaulting promoters are located to make available the list of unsold inventories, vacant land, unsold FAR (floor area ratio) in all projects of these defaulting promoters.
Officials from development authorities including that of Noida, Greater Noida, Yamuna expressway, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Moradabad, Agra, Bareilly, Kanpur, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Gorakhpur, Jhansi and Hapur were present in the meeting held on August 14.
The authority has also looked into projects where the date of completion has lapsed and the developers have not uploaded their completion certificates or the occupancy certificates on the UP RERA website.
“We would be holding online meetings with these developers on this issue and give them a month’s time to upload the details,” he said.
UP RERA has so far issued about 2,000 recovery certificates and the value of the amount in these recovery certificates is over Rs. 600 crore. About 15 percent of the amount against the recovery certificates has been realized and transferred to the homebuyers.