Has MahaRERA ignored the interests of real estate agents?

Confederation of Real Estate Brokers says the act is unfair to them, and members’ recommendations were not considered while formulating and implementing it

Real estate agents are the driving force in the housing industry, however MahaRERA is silent about core problems that they may be facing in their day-to-day work. Representation pic

While most real estate agents in Mumbai and the suburbs have registered themselves with MahaRERA, their association, Confederation of Real Estate Brokers (CREBAI), claims that there is no protection for their interests under the act. Members of the association say the act is unfair to estate agents who play a pivotal role in the real estate industry.

Speaking to mid-day, National President of CREBAI, Vikram Mehta said, "RERA has failed miserably to introduce certain key points that were suggested while the draft proposal was in process. We had suggested that RERA should be applicable across segments including sale/lease of residential/commercial property/industrial and hotel plots etc so that the customers get protection in totality instead of the housing industry."

Estate agents' problems ignored
The real estate agents are the driving force in the housing industry, however MahaRERA is silent about core problems that they may be facing in their day-to-day work. For instance, estate agents are charged with registration fees under MahaRERA to market under-construction properties, but if the builder/developer/promoter fails to honour their dues, there is no recourse under RERA.

Also the builder /promoter of a property may tear a cheque in favour of an unregulated entity and convert it into cash at the same time, show expenses in accounts as there is no defined percentage of brokerage to be written. This could largely be misused by builders, hence the percentage of brokerage and time period of their respective payouts for sale/purchase as well as rental deals should be well defined and regulated, and should be given only to RERA registered real estate agents, but no such provision is made in MahaRERA.

To encourage and achieve high economic success, regulated educated professional realtors are the need of the hour, feels Mehta. Most unregulated entities in the real estate business keep changing their phone numbers and address, thereby making it difficult to track them. A database of all registered realtors could help the law enforcing agencies to monitor shady elements.

Recommendations excluded
Mehta further added, "We had made some recommendations stating that printing of the RERA registration number and other details of the estate agent involved in the deal should be made mandatory, to bring accountability and transparency. Also we suggested that there should be mandatory training programmes for estate agents to appraise them on real estate norms and procedures."

However he claimed that nothing was considered while formulating and implementing the act, which is just unfair to the real estate agents.

When contacted, Paras Gundecha, Chairman Gundecha builders and ex-president Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry said, "The need of the hour is that estate agents should be cautious about dubious builders/promoters who may not be fulfilling their promises, and many of the agents already have data banks of such builders."

However he disagreed with the suggestion that printing the names of estate agents in the agreements / sale deeds is a practical solution, as a builder can have his network of estate agents from across the city and need not be from the area where the project is coming up. Attempts to reach Dr Vasant Prabhu, Secretary MahaRERA, did not yield any result.

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