Q. You are  one of the early movers to Greater Noida. What motivated you to buy a property at Greater Noida?

Mr. Chauhan: I was staying in Noida. Parsvnath had tied up with our company c(Bharat Petroleum) and they gave us a very handsome discount. Overall, we were getting the property at a discounted rate of around 3.75 lakhs compared to other people. Another reason was that I was staying in Noida where the flats are built close to one another with very little open space, so I decided to buy another flat here. I came here and saw the place and the design. It was good. So I booked a corner flat. I am the first one to book a flat in this society, first resident to shift here and also the first one to get registered. Mr. Kapoor: My main motivation was my daughter and son-in-law.

They were staying in Greater Noida. After my retirement I was staying alone in Mayur Vihar. They said, “Why are you living alone? Come to Greater Noida so that we can look after you.” Hence, I moved here one and a half years back.

Mr. Jain: I was staying in Vasant Vihar, which was one of the posh places of Delhi and NCR. I monitored Greater Noida’s progress and found some similarities with Vasant Vihar as far as roads and other infrastructure is concerned. It took 10-15 years for Vasant Viharto reach where it is today. Greater Noida is also at its initial stage and it might take another 10-15 years for it to really come up as a beautiful place.

Mr. Parvej: I am the member of IRWO (India Railway Welfare Organization). I came here to survey the area in the year 2001. I thought that Surajpur was the end of Greater Noida and I didn’t have courage to move further and went back. In the year 2003, I decided to move here as early as possible as I was the member of IRWO and had to move. Greater Noida held promises of being the most futuristic town in India at that point in time and so it was the only choice.

Q. As an individual, what was your experience of home buying and movement to Greater Noida?

Mr. Chauhan: As far as the initial part payment of 95% of total amount to be paid to the builder was concerned, it was okay. I paid that part from my savings, took some part from my company and some part from the bank. I was supposed to give the rest 5% at the time of possession which was about Rs.75,000. I was shocked when I got a bill of 4 lakhs. When I asked I was told that external measurements like swimming pool and lawn have been expanded and many types of taxes have been imposed. Apart from that, half year’s security and maintenance amount was to be paid in advance. Now, at the time of possession, every buyer is in a hurry to take possession. It was very difficult for me to arrange that money but anyhow I managed to arrange that money and then took possession.

Mr. Jain: I liked the location of the place because it was the corner flat and had the biggest balcony out here. The size of the balcony was virtually comparable to a room size. I have no complaints as far as the construction is concerned; there may be complaints regarding the poor quality of material but apart from that as far as ambience and everything else is concerned there are no complaints.

Mr. Parvej: Ours is not builder-and-buyer relationship, rather it is an employee-and-employer relationship. We are the employees of Indian railways and have two Group Housing Societies on the basis of no-profit-no-loss. So we didn’t have much scope for complaints. Whatever price we paid, I feel it was a good value for money. Mine is a 2-bedroom flat and it had cost me Rs. 6.8 lakhs.

Q. When was RWA formed? How was transition from Developers to RWA?

Mr. Parvej: An ad hoc committee was formed by the owners. It was its responsibility to register RWA body with its registration office in Meerut. We had a harrowing experience in trying to register. All sorts of people in the office were asking for bribes. We were fortunate to have got registered within a month; in fact one of the allottees in our society happened to be working on deputation with the ministry of agriculture, who is responsible for supplying the entire food stock to the UP Government. Because of our contacts we could get it done. We had our regular body that is IRWO Palm Court Flat Owner association. Elections were held on Dec 16 last year. We took over firmly ahead of that body.

Mr. Chauhan: We faced the same problem for one and a half years. In fact, we got delayed in getting registered. We started RWA the very first year. We lodged complaint against our builder; a written complaint to the District Magistrate and Police that they have overcharged everyone. They have given some estimate and finally charged something else. Nothing happened to them. The only thing was that the police now had some issue. Police started calling them and us too. But nothing happened. So we started strengthening our RWA by making by-laws. Our RWA is formed with residents but the control of security and maintenance is still with Basundhara. What Parsvnath had done is that they made it mandatory for all allottees to sign an undertaking, at the time of taking possession that maintenance of the society will be controlled by Basundhara for at least 5 years.

Mr. Kapoor: The transaction was more or less smooth. The builders were very keen to form RWA. In the first year itself when people started shifting we got our RWA made. I was the president but basically from Eldeco only. We were managing things. RWA was formed in 2004 and by the middle of 2005 it was being managed by Eldeco but with proper RWA body.  Then we got a new body, a sort of elected body, by the residents. We took over that. There was a lot to apprehension that Eldeco will not give money, they will take away money, but fortunately Eldeco was very keen to give us the money. I remember, even Mr. Shrivastava had some concern that Eldeco will take away the money, but I told him that I was in touch with Mr. Mehera and Mr. Pankaj Bajaj and I told them that they were keen to give us the money. Our builder is good. They say they are builders and they are not into managing RWA. What they did, they recovered 8-10 lakhs which was overdue and was not paid by residents. Rest of the money, they gave. We are back to our minimum maintenance.

Mr. Jain: We still do not have RWA. In a co-operative society, they make money under the table by reselling flats. So the ownership changes, it is just like a share where you can pass on the share from x to y and transfer it and make money out of it. So as long as this practice will continue, the secretary would not want to hand it over to the RWA, because he keeps the money for himself. Removing the secretary is not possible for 2 reasons: First, he was the person who initiated these things and he was the person who brought us into the society. So in any case as per rule we need two-third majority and that will never happen. So it continued but when we started opposing him then he thought of conducting elections 2 years back. He also wanted to wash his hands off.  Then he called us and formed a management body of 4-5 people and told us not to ask us about the capital expenses because what has been done in the past has been done. Now we run things on a day-to-day basis as a formal RWA. They still continue reselling and transfer of properties and we are not willing to do this because we don’t want to go into the complexities of transactions.

Q. What were and are challenges faced in running RWA?

Mr. Parvej: We really don’t feel too much of problem because the entire matter is in our hands. Our biggest hurdle at the time of taking over was the influx of students in our society. Probably, this is the problem plaguing all the societies here. A part of the allottees stay somewhere else and a minority chooses to live here. A larger part chooses to rent out their flats. Obviously, the only consideration is the amount of money the tenants pay; not the inconvenience they create to others. Our society seemed more like a hostel. The owners would make an agreement in the belief that they are handing their flats to only one or two students but later on it was found that there used to live 10-12 students in a flat and that made the environment worse. There was a time when girls and women used to feel intimidated in the society itself. This is common problem in all societies. Finally, we had to take all the members into confidence and gradually we convinced them to throw the students out. We succeeded in a big way and today our residents are living in peace.

Mr. Chauhan: We also faced the problem arising from students living in the apartment. In fact there was a time when few students living in the society were creating inconvenience to the residents. We held an urgent meeting and pulled them out.

Mr. Kapoor:  There will always be some troublemakers. Whenever there is a meeting they will not attend. Only a selected 20-25 people will be there and they are not the people who generally have issues. And when there are no meetings, these troublemakers will come with problems such as generator not working properly, water problem, etc. When we tell them to come forward if they feel the generator can be run in a better way they generally run away. Only one or two people have genuine issues. That is always taken care of. More or less our RWA is being managed well.

Mr. Jain: Problems are always there. There would be all sorts of people and they all have to be dealt in different ways. Somebody may have problem with water seepage from somewhere and somebody something else. People go on complaining, we do send the plumber often and on. But mostly there is no problem at all. They bring issues just because they don’t want to pay maintenance or want to get as much as they pay.  We also had problems due to students living on rent where one flat owner gave his flat to girls, saying that they are his niece and her friends and then six girls started living in that flat. That created problems too. Even they had started complaining about various things. Authority has made many good colleges /institutes but hardly there is any facility for boarding for these students. Even the colleges/institutes don’t have sufficient hostels for their students.

Q. How do you communicate with owners who are not residing within the society?

Mr. Chauhan: It is very difficult to send notices to everyone. We had put a huge notice board and used to put up all notices on that. But we realize that most people are not reading it. Then we put up small notice boards in each block with clamps. We keep on changing the notices and people started reading them.

Mr. Kapoor: We conduct quarterly or bi-monthly meetings.

Mr. Parvej: In our case, we have a website for Rail Vihar (www.irwopalmcourt.com). It is a fact that 90% flat owners in our society do not stay here. The only way to communicate with them is to create such kinds of forum where they can interact with us from any part of the world. We have given all kinds of information pertaining to the society and the minutes of meeting that we hold weekly so that everybody feels a part of the society and keep a track of the activities of the society.

Q. How RWA intervene/regulate Sell & Renting activities within your society?

Mr. Parvej: We have created a page in our website where people who are seeking rent in our society can post their requests. They need to fill that form in the prescribed format. We do the initial screening. We prefer people from MNC and government employees and it should be a family. The committee is there to screen them. If a tenant comes without RWA permission the gates are closed for them. They are not allowed until RWA screens them. We communicated to the flat owners and made it amply clear that it is not possible to communicate each and every rule to them. So we have created a forum and put up all the rules. In order to implement this, you need to have a strong base to control such kind of nonsense. We create a list of prospective tenants and upload it on our website so that owners can directly get in touch with tenants and that way we can do away with the middlemen. In return, we charge 15 days rent as tenant registration charges. The people who are moving into the society as tenants have to sign tripartite agreement with the society. The tenant, owner and RWA sign that agreement.

Mr. Kapoor: We don’t have that type of forum but we do screen tenants. But even then we cannot eliminate this problem wholly. If somebody is renting the flat to students or offering PG accommodation then it is a commercial use and all the charges, electricity, water etc. should be paid on a commercial basis. To avoid renting out to students, as per society by laws, we can threaten the landlord that we are going to inform the concerned authority. Another thing is that the tenant has to be a mandatory member of the club even if they pay separately, because membership that is created by flat owners does not cover the tenants. For the tenant there is a separate fee. That is charged annually.

Mr. Jain: We also screen tenants and see to it that it is a family. But sometimes it happens that the family does not come and boys stay. Then we start forcing them to vacate the place or stay along with the family.

Q. Do you regulate the property brokers/dealers? What’s your experience in dealing with different brokers?

Mr. Kapoor: We have no regulation for broker/dealers. We just conduct screening for tenants.

Mr. Jain: Brokers/dealers are still allowed. We charge 15 days rent as tenant registration charges.

Mr. Parvej: We don’t allow brokers/dealers, in fact, we have left no room for them. We charge 15 days rent as per lease deed from every tenant as tenant registration charges and it is a one-time charge. It is a decision of the RWA committee.

Q. Now the complete control of running the society is with RWA, do you still communicate with builder/developer? Do you get offer on new launch of projects from the builder/developer?

Mr. Kapoor: We have certain issues going on with builders but it is not regarding a day-to-day affair. The only good thing is that right now the builder is involved in our case because they are still the owner of certain parts of the society that are yet to be sold. Last year, they launched their project in Sector 119 Noida and they had invited us. Most of our society residents went there. We have a good relationship with our builder.

Q. How has been your overall experience of staying at Greater Noida?

Mr. Chauhan: Coming back to Greater Noida every day is wonderful. At least you get fresh air. Every day I have to travel at least 60 kms. As soon as I enter Greater Noida, I feel the change in the air and that gives the greatest pleasure. Mr. Jain: Greater Noida is okay except for the law and order part, which is getting worse. We had two thefts recently where obviously the fault lies with the maidservant and partly with the owner because they have not put proper security measures. Then they expect the thief to gat caught. Because everybody is working in a family and there is nobody in the house obviously the maidservant has the whole house to herself. These people are the prime suspects.  We launched complaint with the police. They did not do anything at all. What they did was only to bug the staff that was there and detained them for 24 hours and gave them good bashing but nothing came out of it. After that they forgot their duty.

Mr. Parvej: As far as police interference is concerned, we had a couple of bad experiences. We had a security agency for the internal security of our complex, but their work was not satisfactory.  We tried to replace them with a better one. The previous security agency was a local guy over here. He was not willing to leave. When we went to the police and told them that these security people are holding the society and not moving out, although we have terminated their contract, illegally they are on strike here. Instead of helping us, police asked us whether we took permission when employing the security. When we said we did not, we had to return empty handed without any assistance. Ultimately, we had to spend some amount of money to employ some musclemen to throw them out.

Mr. Kapoor: “Suhani Mahek” gives me the best pleasure. But security is definitely an issue. We had a couple of thefts in a couple of years. For the internal security last year we took some measures. Particularly for the flats which are locked throughout the day or where people are living temporarily, we had told our security guys to make a round trip of the complex once in every two hours and make sure that everything is okay.

Q. Any thoughts on future of Greater Noida? Would you advise potential buyers to buy at Greater Noida- Why?

Mr. Kapoor: It is a well-planned and well-maintained city. It has a good future.  It has potential. Now Greater Noida Airport has been postponed, but it is to happen.  It may take time but it will come up. That is going to be very crucial. Greater Noida is also being developed as a transportation hub. Things will change once the metro comes here. Then this will be a better option than Noida. With Ganga, Yamuna and Hindon expressway, Greater Noida will be an important junction. I would say, 10 years down the line, Greater Noida would be a place to vouch for. Mr. Jain: It will virtually depend upon the type of people who come out to stay here. If people from Delhi migrate, or people who retired and are looking for a better environment come here then things would be good.

Mr. Chauhan: There is a project DMIC (Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor) that is passing through Greater Noida and Dadri is the hub. So this is going to be a transportation hub and also with so many expressways this will be a great place to live.

Atul Sharma President, PARWA (Parsvnath Platinum Residents Welfare Association)

Construction Quality: Parsvnath Platinum, Swarn Nagri, Greater Noida, was handed over in two phases – low rise in 2005 and high rise in 2007. The houses in the low rise are already facing problems due to bad construction quality. Some of the houses in the high rise have also started showing signs of poor construction. The poor quality of construction is most evident in the drainage system in bathrooms due to which there is heavy seepage in most flats. The internal roads were never completed and are in a shambles. The exterior paint is already peeling off. The lifts in the low rise break down every day. The construction and maintenance anomalies are enumerated below.

The Roads: The roads within the complex were never fully finished. The last round of carpeting was not done at all. When the high rise was built, behind the low rise, heavy trucks carried construction material, and damaged the roads. The RWA asked the builder to carpet the road and Parsvnath Developers promised to do it by first week of November 2008, and then went back on the promise and said – the road will not be built! Residents have fallen and injured themselves due to the bad roads.

Exterior Paint: The exteriors of the low rise, have started showing signs of peeling paint, and it is just over three years from the day it was handed over. Should paint quality be so poor that it peels off before five years? Exterior paints have a life of five to seven years. What paint has Parsvnath Developers used?

Lifts: The lifts in the high rise are of good quality. The lifts in the low rise are not fit to be called lifts. For a block of eight apartments, there is one lift, which can hardly take two adults at a time. The lifts are mostly out of order. The maintenance agency is a sister concern of the builder.

Seepage & Damp Patches: Seepage from bathrooms and kitchens above is a common feature. The underground pipes used are of extremely thin section and have collapsed, in situ, due to which water seeps out and spreads in patches. Floors have been ripped and new pipes put in, at the cost of the residents. Builder makes profits, we pay for their faults. We pay to get trouble. Is this not a serious lapse by the builder? Imagine a leaking kitchen or bathroom roof and a fully damp wall in your bedroom. The bathroom fittings used are also of extremely poor quality.

Doors & Windows: The doors and windows are of such unseasoned quality that they expand during the rainy season and create a nuisance for the residents. They also warp and become difficult to close.

Club: The Club and Swimming Pool were built by the builder by converting one flat into a club. The area is absollutely inadequate for a complex with 239 dwelling units. Woefully short on space, the builder charged each owner Rs.20,000 as lifetime membership charges and has now locked the club saying we need to pay annual charges of around Rs.5,000 for club usage. The builder wants to continue to fleece the residents. The club should have been gifted to the residents by the builder because this was a facility promised, in their brochure, but now it lies under the builder’s lock and key.

Maintenance and Handing Over to RWA: The builder, Parsvnath Developers Ltd., appointed its sister concern, Basundhara Properties Pvt. Ltd., as the maintenance agency for three years. The agency managed the complex, which required little maintenance since it was new, for three years. The RWA fought for control but the builder refused to recognize the RWA. Once this new team took charge of the RWA from 14 September 2008, the builder and its maintenance agency started to sweet talk to the new committee into taking over the complex. The plan was to make the RWA take-over, in as-is-where-is condition, because the complex now needs funds for maintenance. The builder and its maintenance agency wanted the RWA to increase the maintenance charges, by about 50%, and give it a new contract. Only under this condition did they want to hand-over control to RWA.

Threatened Pull-Out without proper notice: The maintenance agency sent a letter to the President asking him to take-over on 15/11/2008. The RWA refused to accept the letter. The next thing the maintenance agency did was to threaten to stop all services from the afternoon of 18/11/2008, giving less than 24 hours notice to the RWA.

The present position: The present position is that the RWA is managing the security, gardening, housekeeping etc. because the maintenance agency pulled their people out. A couple of guards from the old agency are still there because they say their dues have not been cleared by Basundhara Properties. The maintenance agency refuses to hand over the keys to the major installations in the complex to the RWA, though the RWA has employed electicians, plumbers etc. to look after water and electricity. The maintenance agency (Basundhara Properties) staffers threaten to stop the supply of water and electricity. They are trying to get back the contract by threatening to leave, then not leaving, and refusing to hand over charge to the RWA. The RWA stands firm in their resolve to bring the wrongdoers to book. Criminal, civil and consumer cases will be filed, in consultation with legal experts, to protect the rights of the owners/residents and to get them their due. The builder, Parsvnath Developers Ltd. and its maintenance agency Basundhara Properties Pvt. Ltd. have failed miserably in meeting the expectations of 239 families in Parsvnath Platinum. They will have to pay for their misdeeds and acts of omission and commission.