Project - Buying Home In Mumbai - Part 1 (How dreams shatter)



Thank you Blogadda for Picking this Post for Tangy Tuesday, this is one post which surely needs a greater audience

 2 Months back when our landlord gave us a notice to vacate the house we decided to take the plunge, i.e. of buying a house. People around us had been expecting us to buy a house long back, err like they were expecting us to have baby immediately after we got married; the great saga of Indian social expectations you see. But I digress, so people around us expected us to buy a house & according to them God only knew why we weren’t taking the plunge. We both were supposedly earning well, supposedly working for good companies and buying for us should have been our first priority i.e. according to them. What they never thought off was a) “affordability” b) they weren’t in our shoes.

I had always felt that I will not compromise in buying my first house, I was clear that it will be a 2 BHK, my hubby however thought differently. He felt, we should buy what we can afford, even if it is a 1 BHK, I was ready to wait, he was not ready to spend much and thus we were stuck. But that was 2 years back, we were actually not earning well to buy a house in Mumbai so we backtracked, or rather we never did really look properly. Cut to present, we decided that it was now or never and thus began the great search and the experiences that we are undergoing can give any one a nightmare.

In my dreamy world, buying a house is a beautiful process, you see some, you fight over others, you run across but at the end you achieve something which is worth your sweat. But as I said that was my dream, the realty reality of Mumbai real estate is not a rosy world at all and this I decided to write a chronicle of the House Search in my blog. Please do follow this series because it can be an eye opener & eye popper as well.

Image Courtesy: Google Images

First let’s place the ground rules of buying a house in Navi Mumbai

• If you want to buy a decent house in your budget you should think of moving away from the city.
• You will have to change your budget because you will never get anything within it.
• It is very difficult to avoid a broker and once you get convinced by him you should be prepared to be fooled.
• Did you know that here in Mumbai if you rent a flat through broker he comes to take the brokerage every year? Don’t be shocked, when your agreement expires he will come back after 11 months and ask for fresh brokerage & if you refuse you will be asked to vacate and no, the owners don’t interfere here. I have met many tenants who don’t even know how their landlord looks like.
• If you want something in your budget you will have to shell out Black money. Wondering what’s that? Will talk about it in detail later.
• If you feel that once you start earning more the prices will be more within your reach then you are dreaming. The prices here are skyrocketing for reasons best known to God knows whom. The situation is like a mirage. You need to take the plunge if you can afford it.
• You pay anywhere between 60-80 lakhs for a decent house of 1000+ sq. ft. but when you actually see the house it is too small.
• Anything that is near the station will be exorbitantly priced. They go by the saying, “you can’t have the cake & eat it also”.
• Gym’s, clubhouses, park etc are provided by everyone but it is only the good builders who provide anything worthy otherwise we have also seen a small room which was supposed to be a gym.
• Jo Dikhta hai who kabhi hota nahin hai, aur jo hota hai who to kabhi batatein hi nahin hai!!!

Let me begin with my experience

While scouting through various sites I saw a house for resale which was within our budget, ready to move, near the local station, not very old & if I sum it up in few words “too good to be true” but that was the beginning of our search I was still the girl with rosy glasses. My hubby was a bit reluctant to check out the house but I insisted because I had spoken to the lady who owned the house and she had managed to impress me. I was convinced because she had honestly told me, “I am selling this house for a little more than the market rate because I have done so much in it”, I felt there is no harm in checking out.

My husband tells me that when he went there and asked, how soon can you vacate the house & why are you selling a house in such a condition, he was told that they can vacate it as soon as tomorrow & they wanted to resell it because they wanted a bigger house. My ever wary husband checked out the house and saw that there was MAJOR leakage in the kitchen, major as in water was flowing freely down the wall. Till date I wonder how can someone think of fooling others and that too when the flaw was so openly visible.

Few days later we decided to scout a place building by building hoping that we might find something good. We decided to check out a ready building, the guy who was showing around told us that just 2-3 flats are remaining, we were impressed. The building was fulfilling our very important condition of being ready to move. The layout of the flat was decent and the construction was good but then when we asked him why the building is empty if it is sold out & ready to move? To which we got the reply that the OC is not there, on being asked when will it come, he said anytime, either 2 months or 4 months. Obviously we said Tata bye-bye to the guy and more dream went poof!!

Same day we decided to visit some builders, in fact a guy had been in touch with me over the week and he had categorically told me that he was a builder, so we decided to pay visit to him. To say that his office was plush would be an understatement & it was in this very office I came face to face with the concept of BLACK MONEY. The bugger was a mere broker & he presented to us the plans of many under construction buildings and following conversation happened between us

Broker: Ma’am payment will be 60-40

Us: What’s that?

Broker: 60% white money & 40% black.
Us: What are you saying? We are salaried class people & we have only white money.

Broker: You give us cash that you have, that will lower down the rate; in fact it is beneficial for you also because the agreement value will be less so the stamp duty registration will also be less.

Us: But this is not done.

Broker: But this is how it is

Us: You mean to say that a normal middle class working family cannot buy a house.

Broker: We aren’t saying that.

Us: But you are encouraging that only.

Broker: Ma’am it is the government policies which are forcing us to do that.

Needless to say we came out muttering hazaar gaali’s, the thief’s are just minting money and they try to sound as if they are being forced to take black money. In fact after that we visited another builder whose project we had liked, he clearly told us that of the 4 projects he had, only one was full white & the cost of that project was 20% higher than any other project. What was infuriating was the bugger’s attitude. And to add to it when we were asked if can get our own grills fixed on the balcony (that was before he told us about the black component) he said, no ma’am we won’t allow that. On being asked why & what about the safety of kids he said it will spoil the beauty of the house & as far as kids are concerned we have given a grill door. When I asked him you mean we should lock the child inside he just shrugged it off.

My husband later told me that I was very angry there & he even says that the kind of fury that was visible on my face was something he had also felt when he had for the first time heard the concept of black.

Let me break up the concept to you.

Say you are buying a flat of 55 Lakhs (that’s the minimum for which you will get a decent flat) and you have to go for the deal of 60-40.

40% of 50L is 22 Lakhs.

Now for remaining 33 Lakhs you take a home loan of which you will only get 80% i.e. you have to fund that 20% yourself which translates to 6.6 lakhs.

So effectively you have to arrange 22.66 lakhs which turns out to be 52%of the deal.

Tell me which salaried class will have that kind of money?

And isn’t it infuriating?

Don’t you feel like slapping the people who make such statements?

I almost did.

I regret not actually slapping the guy.

I feel helpless to see that all this is happening openly.

And honestly at that time I felt, we cannot buy a house here.

And I was depressed for quite some time.

 

P.S. Please share your experience as well.

In part 2 – our first experience with a big builder & finally finding the dream house but is it really what it looks like? The logic & working behind the black component.