MahaRERA bars marketing and sale of 388 projects, freezes bank accounts

MahaRERA, the housing regulator in Mumbai, has cracked down on 388 projects for not updating their Quarterly Progress Reports (QPRs) and frozen their bank accounts. The projects are barred from marketing any housing inventory and registering any agreements for sale. The crackdown comes after months of notices sent to non-complying projects. The projects facing action include 127 from Mumbai, 120 from western Maharashtra, and 57 each from North Maharashtra and Vidarbha. MahaRERA aims to provide updated and transparent information to home buyers.

Mumbai: More than six months after MahaRERA began sending notices to the promoters of registered projects whose information had not been updated, the housing regulator on Monday cracked down on 388 projects which had not updated the Quarterly Progress Reports (QPRs) on their registration pages on the regulator’s portal and kept their registration in abeyance.

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The Authority has issued orders to freeze the operating bank accounts of the projects and barred them from marketing any housing inventory. It has also directed the Inspector-General of Registrar of Stamps and Registration to not register any agreements for sale from these projects.

The 388 projects facing action include 127 from the Mumbai metropolitan region, 120 from western Maharashtra, 57 each from North Maharashtra and Vidarbha, 16 from the Marathwada region and 11 from Konkan. Nearly all the builders are small and unknown.

In January this year, 746 new housing projects were registered with MahaRERA. The Authority had begun a monitoring exercise and appointed retired IAS officer Sanjay Deshmukh as nodal officer to collect information on projects which were not updating mandatory information under RERA provisions, and started serving notices to non-complying projects. Facing persistent criticism that MahaRERA was a toothless regulator, the Authority had adopted a financial quarter-based project progress reporting system and urged project promoters to showcase updated information which would help home buyers make an informed decision.

The 746 freshly registered projects were notified to update their QPRs every three months. The QPRs are expected to provide exact information about how many units are available in a project, how many are booked, their configurations and the progress of the construction along with financial information on funds collected through bookings and spends during the quarter. Project promoters had to simply fill up Form Numbers 1 to 3 providing this information and upload them.

“Only three projects responded to our appeals initially,” said a MahaRERA official. “The Authority served two show cause notices, giving adequate time to project promoters to update this information. Out of 746 projects, 358 projects responded to the notice, and action has been initiated against 388 projects whose promoters did not respond.”

Under Section 11 of the Real Estate (Regulation and development) Act (RERA), it is mandatory for project promoters to provide quarterly and annual progress reports on the MahaRERA portal. MahaRERA has also made it mandatory for projects to display QR codes. The idea is to provide updated, transparent information to home buyers about ongoing projects to help them make an informed buying decision. From early 2024, the Authority also plans to provide a grading system to showcase the best projects where consumers can invest.