Buying Apartments in Bangalore

Real Estate Case Studies:

For last 3 years , I have have  experienced and heard of  illegal and maipulative ways of builders in bangalore. Felt it would be apt to list down all these informations. It gets easier to go through repository of  real estate observations and make decisions. Believe that’s what is called Informed Decision making.

Case 1: Small AP Builders:

These people are originally from Hyderbad. Have very little experience in handling projects start to end. A lot of projects in Ecity, BTM and JP Nagar are their products.

These chaps insist that you pay 100K upfront to be given the property documents.

Get ready to run after them for everything.

For a very small- small issues you have to run after them for months e.g. for getting the flooring done, for kitchen slab,doors, windows, electrical fittings, house painting.Remember these are the basic things that comes with your flat,they will have one or another excuse for not getting it done. They will even get angry on you if you go with complains/requests. Sub-standard materials would be used for contruction.

Within a year you will start facing problems like major cracks on walls , water coming from outside wall , dampness, window coming out, electricty problem, bathroom tiles problem,hollow tiles,broken tiles. They have a very standard answer to these problems 'Will do it next week'. They simple wait till completion of one year then they will disappear.

These builders have no previous history of completed projects. Then how come they have so much information on bank loans, approvals etc. They keep changing name of their company. Stay away from them.

Case 2: Some FAMOUS BUILDERS:

1)      Delivery Delays (Project delays are common. In some cases exact hand over date is delayed by a year or more

2)      Be ready to lose 25% of project cost...by the time they deliver, your net project cost would have gone up by 20-25%

3)      Careful with their agreement clauses

4)      Careful with their payment schedule...this has no relevance to their construction progress.

5)      Careful with their sales promises...knowingly or unknowingly they may be cheating you (my personal experience) and management does not care about those promises.

          Agreement Terms
          They are mostly one-sided.

They also charge hefty Advocate fee from customers. This basically means you are   paying the advocate fee to have the agreements designed for the benefit of the "Other Party". Considering that all the agreements use the same format - Advocate fee is really wonderful profit margin !
Be cautious of delay clauses: What happens if the project is delayed ? Developers may also have a clause to pay penalty on delay. But look at these clauses carefully to see when they are not applicable and argue with them to change suitably.
Be cautious of Payment Schedule : Clarify what it means in terms of actual completion. Most probably, you will pay all the money at least 1 yr in advance, though they claim otherwise !!!
Ask them questions on sharing of financial loss. e.g. if they delay the project by 1-2 years, govt may increase taxes & levies. If the increase is substantial, then you will lose a lot.

Normal areas of contention:

Uninterrupted Power Supply:

Check and see what they mean by this.

They claim uninterrupted power supply, while actually you get only 50W of back up power per apt and that also only in a pre-designated point. In most cases only the Lift can avail the power backup.

Amenities:

Its only a conceptual offering on their broacher, and it is not legally binding. Verify with the builder.

Club house charges:

They charge initial amount + monthly maintenance + usage charges, so overall it turns out to be quit expensive

Construction Quality:

Extremely bad tiling work - cracked tiles, not leveled properly, not filled properly (they crack later), diff shades of tiles used in same room

Be careful with bath fittings. These chaps promise something and install some other things.

Water Supply:

Check whether they have bore well and also depth of it. Also get to know where is the storage tank and its size. If the aparatment is more than 8 storied then pressure regulators is a must.