Register entire township as one project: Tamil Nadu RERA Tribunal tells House of Hiranandani

The Tamil Nadu Real Estate Regulatory Authority (TN RERA) Appellate Tribunal has ordered developer House of Hiranandani to register its multi-tower township as a single real estate project.

Passing an order, the TN RERA appellate tribunal bench said builders cannot "cleverly" get around the RERA Act regulations by registering each tower separately.

"The project remains incomplete despite its commencement in 2012 before the RERA Act came into place in 2016. Thus the entire township is an ongoing project and should have been registered as a single real estate project," the tribunal told the developer.

The appellate tribunal hears appeals from homebuyers or developers against orders passed by the state real estate regulator.

To date, the developer has completed Phase 1, consisting of six towers, and construction of Phase 2, consisting of seven towers, is ongoing. However, the developer has registered only three towers in Phase 2 as real estate projects as if those are separate and standalone towers, the order added.

"The developer had admitted in their written submission that the Amalfi Tower (one of the towers in Phase 2) forms part of the entire township project. Simply because the Amalfi Tower was registered as a standalone project with Tamil Nadu Real Estate Regulatory Authority by concealing facts, it cannot be held as a standalone project," the order said.

This comes after the developer moved the appellate tribunal after TN RERA passed an order in favour of the Resident Welfare Association (RWA) in 2022. In this case, the developer has built a 120-acre township project at Egattur in Chengalpattu district in Tamil Nadu.

Tribunal asks developer to refund deposit to RWA
The tribunal also noted that the developer has collected Rs 98,500 from every homebuyer in Phase 2 as a "township corpus fund" totalling Rs 1.23 crore. "The developer must return 70 percent of the corpus fund to the RWA and retain the rest until the entire township is complete," the order said.

It added that the RWA should be allowed to retrieve the money, along with the interest, as the builder had already deposited it at the time of filing the current appeal last year.

Previously in another case, Karnataka RERA had told a Bengaluru-based real estate company that a township containing several phases needs to have multiple RWAs for each phase of development, Moneycontrol had reported.

To enable transparency, KRERA said bank accounts should be provided to each association regarding the spending and deposit of advance maintenance charges. It also asked the developer to hand over corpus funds to respective associations.