It isn’t everyday that home owners take to the street. You do have some activism when people’s homes are threatened by demolition orders, but rarely ever else do you see a collective of home buyers/ owners resorting to activism to get their voices heard. In this context, the call by home buyers, with investments in a project promoted by Unitech in Gurgaon named The Residences, to pick up picks and shovels to get the job of building done was bound to attract attention.
The builder’s excuse for the delay has been a shortage of construction workers, and the buyers had trudged to the site with their boots on to symbolically lend a hand. The contention of the buyers’ association is that the builder is earning interest on the investment and stalling the work for his own reasons. They are now looking to approach the court and various regulators to try and bring pressure to bear on the developer.
Instances of delays are more the norm than the exception in India’s housing development sector. And the dice is clearly loaded in favour of builders and investors. However, that’s changing. Some recent instances of developers being asked to compensate home buyers for delays or for alteration of specifications have emboldened buyers. This is an excellent sign.
Brand attributeDevelopers are becoming conscious of this and some are starting to leverage timely delivery as a USP and a brand attribute to extract a premium. While this offers value to both the builder and the buyer, it is likely that the premium for on-time delivery, as in the aviation sector, will diminish over time with every player looking to make this attribute a part of their core proposition.
For now, though, it will be wise for home buyers to delve into the track record of delivery by a developer before committing funds. Unitech, it has been reported, has exhibited similar deviant behaviour in the past. And if the buyers of homes in The Residences had checked up on this, they might have given the project a miss, or at the least, they would have been forewarned.
