Govt must focus on digitization of property records: HRERA Chairman

New Delhi: Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority Chairman, Dr KK Khandelwal on Friday said that the government must focus on digitization of property records to bring transparency in the secondary real estate market. Addressing a FICCI conference on "Improving Transparency in Secondary Real Estate Market", he said that digitization will help in reducing the legal cost and process time thereby, building confidence among the buyers. Khandelwal suggested that an online database of all the real estate agents across India must be introduced for better functioning of the real estate market and make it organised, regulated and transparent.

After months of waiting, the Haryana Real Rstate Regulatory Act (HRERA) has now started functioning officially. Affected by the downturn in real estate business for long the challenge is not only to have occupancy in over 50,000 residential units but also to provide possession to thousands of homebuyers.

Some of these homebuyers have been waiting for more than 10 years to occupy their residential units. In order to solve the major housing challenges for the allottee, the state government hopes that HRERA will prove to be an effective consumer platform. In Gurugram, over 800 ongoing projects and 300 new projects will be under the ambit of HRERA. A key aspect that can make the real estate watchdog effective is transparency as all the developers will have to provide the status of their projects in the HRERA website. Further, the government agency has to solve the grievance of the consumer within 60 days of receiving the complaint. "Our main emphasis is to ensure that all the stakeholders especially the allottee's interest is taken care of. Even though the aggrieved homebuyers have the options of approaching the consumer court, the government has set up HRERA so that the grievance of the consumer can be solved in the time bound manner," said KK Khandelwal.

As of now, 200 complaints have been received by the officials. After RERA was passed by the Central government in May last year, the Haryana government passed HRERA in the last week of July.