KOCHI: Every month Jyomon pays Rs 10,000 as house rent and Rs 27,500 as EMI to pay back a loan he had taken for a house he would probably never own. Mukundan pays a rent of Rs 7,500 for his apartment and an EMI of Rs 22,000 towards the repayment of a loan he had taken in the vain hope on owning a house one day.Like Jyomon and Mukundan, hundreds of Kochiites are the victims of hollow promises and irresistible wooing of the real estate mafia in the city. “I had taken a loan of Rs 2 lakh from a bank to book a flat in Kaloor. The builder had promised to deliver the flat within 10 months. But he kept on extending the date and the flat was not delivered even after 16 months post-deadline. By the time I realised that I was being cheated, I had already paid Rs 12.5 lakh towards the apartment and the builder was planning to move to Tanzania. But I, along with some other victims, filed a complaint with the police and the culprit was taken into custody. Currently, there is a court case going on based on the issue,” said Sukumaran. “Now, all of us who had booked apartments with the builder have formed an association and we have completed the rest of the project by funding it from our own pockets. I had to shell out an extra amount of Rs 2 lakh. And I am still paying back my loan,” he added. “The project in which I invested was approved by a reputed bank. They had even endorsed it! So I took a loan from that bank itself. It will take me another 20 years to pay back the loan. But the bank says that it is not responsible for this in anyway. Though I partly agree, the bank’s association with the builder was one of the major reasons why I invested in the project. Now, I have to pay back a loan for which I will not get anything in return,” said Shameem, who was a victim of a hoax project in Kakkanad. “I feel that the government should have a consumer-friendly law rather than a pro-culprit one. After we filed complaints against the builder, we started receiving threatening calls. Luckily, none of them materialised,” he noted.Meanwhile, banks are of the opinion that their end of the deal is clear, but not entirely foolproof. “In case of a loan application for booking an apartment, the property-to-be-bought becomes the security and the bank will enter into a tri-partite agreement with the customer and the builder. The builder will give a declaration about the required details of the project and that he will finish the project within the set date,” said a retired regional manager of a reputed bank. “Even if the builder lets down the consumer, there is no provision for the bank to take action against the builder. But if the consumer refuses to pay back the loan on this basis, the bank can file a salary suite with the court and can recover the amount from the defaulter’s salary,” he added.The official of another bank was of the opinion that the banks too are affected when the builder engages in a breach of contract. “There are builders who take loans from banks and then ‘vanish’ without a trace. In that case, the banks are at a total loss. We cannot realise the funds by taking over the project as only the builder knows the status of the project,” said a highly placed official of a nationalised bank.
Comments
0 comment