Law Layed Down For The Developers

Supreme Court’s judgment on the Amrapali saga has restored faith in homebuyers.

- Vishav

It was in 2010 that Pashupati Sharma, a Delhi resident, booked a flat in Amrapali Group’s Smart City project in Noida Extension. He was around 33 years old at that time and his daughter was just a few months old. He had bought the flat with a hope that his daughter would grow in her own home instead of a rented one. Today his daughter is already 10 years old and he is still living in a rented accommodation in Noida Extension area with no idea when he would get his flat and whether her daughter would be able to experience living in her own home before she moves out for higher studies.

There are tens of thousands of such stories across the country, especially in Noida and Greater Noida, where home buyers are still awaiting possession of their homes despite paying the full cost of their flats. Most of them are paying their EMIs for almost a decade and paying rent at the same time because they are not able to move into their homes which were due to them years back.

According to a research by ANAROCK property consultants, as many as 220 projects equalling 1.74 lakh homes are completely stalled in the top-seven cities alone. Launched either in 2013 or before, these projects have absolutely no construction activity going on. The overall value of all stalled units is estimated to be more than `1,774 billion. Most of these projects have been grounded due to either liquidity issues or litigations. Almost 66 per cent of these stalled units (approx. 1.15 lakh homes with approximate cost of `1,111 billion) have already been sold to buyers who have been left in the lurch - at the mercy of either the concerned developers or the law of the land.