BENGALURU: The issue of names of flat owners not being created when agreements are being registered at Sub Registrar offices is posing enormous problems to buyers. In many cases, the builder or promoter in whose name the property still remains, ends up mortgaging the property to mobilise resources without the knowledge of the owners, say home buyers in Karnataka.
The Karnataka Home Buyers Forum has taken the issue to the government recently to ensure this major lacuna in the system is fixed. Forum convenor Dhananjaya Padmanabhachar told TNIE, “Charges (names in Encumbrance Certificates) are not being created/changed when the agreements are getting registered at Sub Registrar office. These charges need to reflect in the Title or Khata of the land of the property on which the apartment is constructed. This problem needs to be fixed at the earliest. Otherwise, this gives the promoter a free hand to mortgage the documents and raise resources and this has already started happening in a few cases.”
Giving a specific instance of its abuse by promoters in which he along with hundreds of buyers were personally impacted, he said, “Sobha Developers mortaged our land in June 2022 for Rs 160 crore after the project was completed and hundreds of sale deeds executed.”
Padmanabhachar added, “This is a problem persisting for long. We have just identified the root cause behind this, and are impressing upon the government to address this major flaw in the system. Ideally, banks need to validate the ownership of the property before releasing funds but obviously they are not doing it.”
TNIE had also recently highlighted an instance of the owner of Commune Properties on Chandapur-Anekal Road pledging documents of the property to a non-banking finance company after flats were sold to buyers without their knowledge.
Karthikeyan R, a property purchaser, told TNIE that he was upset to note that his father’s name was not reflecting in the property he purchased at Malur. “I will soon be going to the Sub Registrar office from Bengaluru to Malur to find out what is going wrong. This is making us very anxious as we have spent a good sum buying the property but our family’s name is not showing up in the ownership document,” he said. A government source said he was aware of this issue. and that they have received some complaints regarding the same.