Redevelopment
How society redevelopment actually works
The journey a housing society takes from its first general body meeting to the day its members come home — and the four points where it usually stalls.
Why a society redevelops at all
ost of the buildings being redeveloped in Mumbai today were built in an era of different structural codes, different services and, crucially, a different idea of how much space a family needs. They are not usually dangerous. They are usually expensive to keep standing, hard to insure, and impossible to upgrade one flat at a time.
Redevelopment turns that problem into a new beginning: the plot's unused development potential pays for a new building, and existing members get a larger home in it without writing a cheque. Everything difficult about the process follows from the fact that this is true, but takes years.
The sequence, in order
- The society resolves to explore redevelopment at a general body meeting, and appoints a project management consultant to advise it.
- Members' entitlements — the carpet area each existing flat is owed in the new building — are established before any developer is shortlisted.
- Developers are invited to offer against that brief, and the society selects one at a special general body meeting with the majority its bye-laws require.
- A development agreement is registered, permissions are filed, and members vacate against a written rent and a written handover date.
- The building goes up, the occupation certificate is obtained, and members move back in with their new agreements registered in their own names.
Where it stalls
Four points, almost always. The first is entitlement: a society that shortlists developers before it has agreed internally what each member is owed will re-open that argument at every subsequent stage.
The second is the rent during construction — not the amount, but whether it is paid on time in month twenty-six. The third is a permission nobody sequenced, which turns a schedule into a queue. The fourth is the handover date, which is the only one of the four a member remembers afterwards.
What to ask a developer
- Which of your completed projects were redevelopments, and can we speak to those societies directly?
- Who signs the drawings, and will the same office answer for them at handover?
- What is the written handover date, and what happens contractually if it is missed?
- How is the transit rent secured, and who pays it in month twenty-six?