₹100 crore recovered from builders after MahaRERA nudge

Mumbai: Over ₹100.56 crore of home buyers’ refund money has been recovered from errant developers by the collectors of four districts after housing regulator MahaRERA requested district collectors to speed up the process of executing recovery warrants.

In December, the Authority had written to 13 district collectors to provide special assistance to home buyers and help execute the recovery warrants issued by the Authority to facilitate the process. Letters were sent to the collectors of Mumbai, suburban Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Raigad, Palghar, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Nashik, Chandrapur, Sindhudurg, Satara and Ratnagiri seeking their cooperation. MahaRERA has issued 733 recovery warrants worth ₹729.68 crore in the last five years but many of these warrants had not been implemented.

A large chunk of the recovery warrants was in Mumbai city, Mumbai suburban, Pune and Raigad districts, where ₹413.79 crore worth of home buyers’ refunds were not paid despite 594 recovery warrants issued by the Authority. A month later, these four districts have executed 118 warrants and recovered ₹100.56 crore, providing relief to home buyers, official sources said.

Of the 14 warrants issued to developers in Mumbai city, the collector completed the recovery of three warrants and recovered ₹11.42 crore. In the Mumbai suburban collector’s jurisdiction, 343 warrants were issued by the authority to recover ₹245.84 crore. Of these, 80 warrants were executed and ₹55.57 crore recovered.

Similarly in Pune district, the authority had issued 163 warrants to recover ₹107.93 crore. Of these, 33 warrants were executed and ₹32.76 crore recovered by the revenue officials. In Raigad district, 74 warrants were issued to recover ₹15.10 crore. Of these, two warrants were implemented and ₹81 lakh was recovered.

If errant developers do not comply with the refund orders issued by the Authority, Section 40 (1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, relies upon the revenue recovery process of the state collectors under the Maharashtra Land Recovery Code (MLRC), which has a long-drawn process undertaken by the local tahsildar. The tahsildar serves two notices to the non-complying developer to pay up, and if the developer still does not comply, the concerned property is sealed and auctioned to recover the money.