UP RERA to give grades to all realty projects

The Uttar Pradesh real estate regulator (UP-Rera) will conduct a grading exercise of developers as well as housing projects in the state, which homebuyers and financial institutions can use as a guide. Each developer and project, as a result, will get an individual rating — on a scale of zero to five, with five being the best. UP-Rera chairperson Rajive Kumar told media on Thursday, “We will start the process from January and the plan is to come out with first grading by September (2019). The grading will be primarily based on feedback of people who have been associated with the project and how compliant they (the projects and builders) are with the Rera rules.” Kumar said the grading will help create a track record for builders, which will benefit all stakeholders in the sector, which is plagued by long delays and a prolonged slowdown, particularly in Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad. UP-Rera will engage a third party for carrying out the grading exercise. This is being seen as an innovative mode of “naming and shaming” the real estate players guilty of not delivering projects to buyers on time. Speaking at a workshop on compliance with Rera norms in the northern states, Kumar said they have received about 80,000 complaints from the entire state and 80% of them were from Noida, Greater and Ghaziabad. “We are working to resolve the cases and are hopeful of fast disposal of most of these complaints,” he said. The UP-Rera chief also said they had carried out a study to find out how many stalled projects in NCR (in UP territory) can be completed. “Out of the 98 projects which were covered, there is absolutely no problem in case of 25 projects. There are serious issues in another 20-25 projects, which are difficult to resolve. “The remaining projects can be revived by roping in a co-developer or providing seed funding. Physical progress in these projects is over 80%. What we need is some last-mile corpus to complete the work. We need to resolve the issue quickly,” Kumar said. These projects exclude the ones under Amrapali Group, Jaypee (both in Supreme Court) and 3C. A high-powered committee set up by the UP government had also proposed a similar arrangement to complete projects besides giving some relaxation to developers to bring in new players to complete stalled projects. Sources said the UP cabinet is likely to consider the recommendations of the high-powered committee this month and will take a decision to complete the projects.