Santosh gunde (SSE) 30 September 2013

Builder asking for interest to sell the flat

I had booked a FLAT in Pimpri, Pune area last year May 2012 by paying him 20% booking amount. I had a sanctioned loan from HDFC by then as I was a NRI for 6months. After that the builder continued his construction for few monehts and later had stopped the work for nearly 4-6 months. I too returned back in Aug12 and saw the slow progres of his work. The flat which he said would be possessioned in Diwali 2012, is still in progress. Now in June 2013, he said lets do the agreement but then HDFC cancelled my loan proposal as my current salary was not fitting for the loan amount. I started fresh loan process combining my brother's income and got loan approval from SBI after 2months in Sep13, but now builder is saying he has already taken a Token Booking amount from another person for the same FLAT. Later after lots of to-fro and other arguments, he said he is ready to sell the FLAT if I pay him the interest for this last 16months ideal period as his work is now 95% complete which actually may not be. This interest comes to nearly 6 lakhs based on the toa flat amount as 44.5 Lakhs. Please guide me in this situation.

3 Replies

Kolla Gangadhar (Practicing Advocate since 1986) 01 October 2013

Did you enter Agreement? if so you both are binding by agreement. You state true facts and send letter to him or through Advocate state that you are ready to pay balance of sale consideration immediately. You state that orally Builder demanded interest but on account of delay of construction you have not paid balance of sale consideration. If Builder does not come forward to accept Balance of sale consideration , refuse to register sale deed in your favour you file complaint before Consumer Forum.

T. Kalaiselvan, Advocate (Advocate) 01 October 2013

Mr. Gunde,

You have stated to have paid 20% of sale consideration amount to your builder. It means you have entered into a sale agreement with your builder, please verify the conditions set forth therein. In case your builder is trying to defraud you or trying to extort money on some false claim, please issue him with a lawyer's notice seeking the relief of his performance of contract as per the sale agreement.

Santosh gunde (SSE) 04 October 2013

I had just paid him the 20% amount by cheque and there is no paper work / documentation for it apart from 2 print out receipts of which both the receipts just state the Flat No. and the cheque No. of the bank by which the TWO 10% booking amounts were paid by 15May2012. After this we just had visits to site and telephone calls about the construction work as for nearly 3-6 months there was no work in progress. Later he started the work again in last week of May 2013 and he called me in first week of June saying lets sign the agreement. Till then there was no issues and he never talked about any interest just the agreement. There was some loan issue of santioned home loan by HDFC so I said him to give some time to approach SBI and I will get back to him. When I got the SBI Home Loan sanction later in Sep13 and showed him the letter to proceed with agreement. he then said that he took a token amount from other party for the flat and will think if he needs to sell me or not. after 3 weeks of follow up he said he would sell me the flat only if I pay him the interest and will let me know the interest amount after calculation. He again took 2 weeks for calculation and calculated the interest amount since June2012 for his 98% completed work as 5.85 Lakhs as of today.

Let me know if this is right and legal and I really need to pay him this amount for buying the Flat.