India’s real estate sector is under tremendous pressure with developers buckling under heavy debt, inventory piling up and sales continuing to remain low. The only way for the sector to bounce back is to regain the home buyer’s trust and that is impossible when the industry’s biggest names break their promises.

The Jaypee Mess: 32,000 Angry Customers & Counting

The Jaypee Group is one of the biggest conglomerates in India and industry experts say it has almost single-handedly eroded home buyer confidence in the National Capital Region (NCR). A combination of factors involving over-expansion and diversion of funds has left the company cash strapped, with almost no money to complete scores of its projects. But none of that matters to Jaypee’s consumers who have shelled out almost the entire cost of the project.

“I booked my flat in the project in Noida sector 151 and I paid around 90% of the total amount. I keep visiting the site but over the past year, I have hardly seen any construction happening. The site looks abandoned.” claims Gaurav Agarwal, buyer of Jaypee’s Aman project.

The Jaypee group has repeatedly revised deadlines for possession, only to consistently break them; all acts that have left buyers fuming. “I was to get my flat in 2016 but now the builder is saying it will be delivered by the end of 2017. Even if I get possession in 2017, my loss would be around 12 lakh rupees which will go out of my pocket.” complains Chandan Rajgadhia, buyer in Jaypee’s Krescent Project.

Industry sources indicate that Jaypee has about 41 projects which are running behind schedule in Noida and Greater Noida, with nearly 32,000 buyers waiting for possession.

The Jaypee Group: Too big to be Held Accountable?

That’s a scandalous state of affairs for a company that got land for free along with rights to build the Yamuna Expressway. But the big mystery here is where did the money collected for these 41 projects go?

NDTV repeatedly got in touch with the Jaypee Group to get an answer, but the company refused to comment. The group’s chairman Manoj Gaur recently gave interviews to a national daily outlining his plans to pay off some of the group’s massive debts, but there was no mention of when the group’s stalled projects would be completed or what measures were being considered to help the company’s helpless customers.

Are India’s builders too big to be held responsible? The common man has neither the time nor the money to take these builders to court; a fact that has repeatedly been abused by the developer community. One can only hope the formation of a housing regulator helps, otherwise the real estate sector will continue seeing its customers vanish.

Reporter : Chankya Bhatia, NDTV
Web Editor : Nikhil Narayan Sivadas, NDTV