Delays, Delays, and even more delays at RWD Fern, Medavakkam

Think about this: Dec 2008, RWD claim that Fern will be completed by Nov 2009. 10 months later, they revise the schedule and say that the project will be completed by May 2010. And then in June 2010, they say it will be done in Feb 2011. So is that over now? No. Only 95% is over, and no idea of how long that 5% will take. Check the RWD post forwarded by one of the readers to me:

Lets hope that RWD will take another 6 months time to complete this 5%

Housing Scam may hit Properties Under-construction quite badly ...

From Common Floor blog:

"Stung by Housing Loan Scam, banks and housing finance companies will seek additional security and add completion guarantee clauses into agreements before sanctioning loans to developers."

Wish this would have happened long back. Then RWD would have to give the completion guarantee to the Banks, else it won't get approval for the loans. And if they fail to deliver on time, then banks will never give any loans to them again. Good thing is the new customers of RWD will definitely benefit if the banks push for the guarantee clauses in their agreements.

High court: Developers cannot construct new buildings that are not part of original plan

In a landmark judgement, Bombay High Court has ruled out the options for the developers to construct any new buildings that are not part of the original plan given out to the buyers. The developer can proceed with construction, only after getting the nod from the existing buyers.

This is an wonderful judgement for the residents of the society. This should stop the ugly tricks of the developers, who first promise that there will be only limited number of households in a complex; sell them; and later increase households with new constructions. Click here for the more details.

For the record, RWD did the same for the RWD Palm. RWD initially promised that there will be only ~180 individual houses and all the amenities will be shared by the residents of those houses only. But then later, RWD started Fern and Spring inside the gated area. This not only increased the population of the community, but it came with other issues like the transformer issues, sewage water treatement etc. Probably the owners of the RWD Palm should go ahead and file a case against RWD for the flats and seek proper compensation.

RWD refusing to get the Completion Certificates

In the CommonFloor.com website, from the interesting discussion by the current owners of the RWD apartments, it seems that RWD is not obtaining the Completion Certificate from the Panchayat office. For the background of this, whenever you construct a building (both residential & commercial), you need two important certificates from the Goverment authorities. The first one is the Layout & Plan approval. This means that you propose a design for the building and the Govt. approves the design. Once the construction is over, you need to get the Completion Certificate (sometimes called as Occupational Certificate) This certificate means that the construction was done without any violation and goes as per the approved plan.

RWD has so far refused to obtain the Completion Certificates for the villas as well as apartments. I wouldn't think that there would be major violation in the approved plan (like constructing five floors while only four floors were approved), but this could be because of the quality of the construction. Earlier, we have seen that RWD is heavily reduced the size of the walls and pillars from 2 inches to 1.2 inches. If that is true, by reducing the size of the walls and pillars, they benefit as the cost of the construction is substantially reduced. The problem lies in the fact that the strength of the building is also reduced.

There is also a discussion going on about forming the official owners association. Once that is done, probably getting the certificates should be easier.

Shocking information about the quality of the recent constructions in RWD, Medavakkam

[Update 23-Sep-2010]
   This item has been verified. See the first comment of this blog post.

For me the main motto of maintaining this site is to provide the facts on the RWD projects in Medavakkam. I never publish something which I don't verify. But this one is going to be an exception.

Few days back I received a comment about the quality of the recent construction. At first it sounded like someone from the Marketing Department of DOSHI has posted it, but with a little investigation I was able to verity that the person is a real customer. But however, I couldn't not verify his claims, so I post the content with a warning: "Although the text below appears to be true & accurate, I don't give any guarantee for that. Caveat emptor!"

Hi ....


I am true consume. Nor a RWD Employee or NOR a RWD resident. I am just here to narrate what I went through in this project.

I was interested in buying a Villa around OMR, so I was in touch with all builders. Unfortunately I was very late so the best projects like Chettinad Enclave, Isha Signature Villa, etc... is completely sold out.

I was left out with only two options 1) RWD PALM & the second one was S&P Foundation


RWD PALM: I was totally convinced on their floor plans, construction specification, location etc... When I was inquiring about the project I came across this website, still I neglected these comments, went ahead and asked my father in law to book a villa. But their came a shocking turning point. When my father in law went for giving the cheque, he wanted to visit the site for examining the construction quality and enquirer all other tenants/owners of the properties. Their he had a worst experience, RWD employees were escorting my father for each and every step in the project site. He was not allowed to interact with any one their. Then he got some doubts and checked size, quality of the construction (Basically he is an civil engineer) He was totally shocked to see RWD has not fulfilled the specifications what they have quoted even a bit. wherever they have quotes as 2" wall , they have constructed only 1.2" and the WOOD is not TEAK, it is some country wood. Inspite of compulsion he refused for paying the booking amount and he came back that day without giving any confirmation to them.

After all this He enquired about S & P, their atleast builder & Construction is good, but approach road of the site has slum.

After a long search today I have invested with DOSHI Serene county. (Which is 10 Minutes from RWD).



I am giving a complete story of my experience just for all investors knowledge. Please verify thoroughly about the reputation of the builder before you step in. and do not neglect this post. These are much important to avoid such frauds

RWD trying to bring down this blog ...

If you happen to search in Google for "RWD Palm" or "RWD Fern" or "RWD Medavakkam", this blog comes up in the first five results. This has become a big problem for RWD, as the prospective customers who are looking up for information are provided with the actual facts on RWD. When they know about the facts, they either try to ask the right questions to the marketing people or just stay away. So this blog is hurting their business and they want this to go down.

As a first step, they tried to post comments in this blog (see my first post titled "Facts on RWD Palm and RWD Fern") with some positive things about RWD (all of them are false). I've removed all those and left just one so that the readers will know the fact.

Having failed with that attempt, they tried to find my real identity. Under the cover of prospective customers, they sent me mail saying that they wanted to talk to me and wanted my phone number & real name. hmmm, good try. Hey RWD guys, I purchased a house there, but don't judge me with that one foolish decision ;-) I'm a little intelligent than you think.

Failing to find my real identity, they threatened me with that they will be filing a defamatory case and I've to face all legal consequences. As all I write in this blog are nothing but facts on the RWD projects, I'm well within the legal limits. They can't do anything legally against this blog, unless I publish something wrong about them. So I replied them to go ahead with the case. I'm yet to hear from any lawyers :-)

Since all their efforts in bring this website down have failed, now they are trying to do bring down the Google ranking of this website, so that at least its not visible in the first page of the search results. They are trying hard to accomplish this task by creating web pages with the title "Facts on RWD Palm" - which happens to be the title of this blog.

Their first attempt I found out was to create few pages on wikipedia with that. One fine day all those wikipedia pages were on the top search results (as wikipedia has high page rank) and this blog was pushed to the bottom. Well, that does't last long as the adminstrators of wikipedia deleted all those pages, citing that they were irrelevant. Everything was restored to normalcy. The deleted pages are still available here. Visit there and verify the facts I'm saying.

Their next attempt is to create webpages elsewhere. One such thing I found today was the AnswerBag website. The page is available here. In case it gets deleted, I've a screenshot of the partial page (click on the image for a bigger one):

So it goes like this: A user starts a post with the title "Facts on RWD palm and fern". The message is "RWD aims to achieve in execution of Projects that will result in Good quality work, on time delivery and Customer Satisfaction". Yeah, we all know "on time delivery" and the track record of delays are caused in RWD Palm and Fern. Then there are two other users join the thread; ask; answer & discuss about RWD. Well, did you notice something? All three users joined on the same day, and the entire conversation happens with in few mins of the same day. Doesn't it look suspuicious? Also not so surprisingly - the user Selvi, who started the thread, has the same name with the one who created the wikipedia pages. This name does ring a bell in my head. Digging my emails, I also find a mail communication from a Selvi - who apparently works for the company which created RWD's website. See how all fits? The Selvi keeps posting the same bull shit in various places. One such example is here, where its completely irrelevant and one more here, where its posted with a different name.

I'm sure that RWD will be continuting the efforts to bring down this website - either literally or at least in the Google ranking, so lets see what happens.

For those RWD guys, who are watching this blog, just be informed, that none of your silly efforts will stop me from telling the truth. If only you had spent time on improving the quality of the constructions and bringing down the delay, this blog would have never come into existance in the first place.

Update 16-July-2010:

   One of the reader brought this to me: A user called Ramky Estates creating about 50 different blogs all with similar titles ("facts on rwd") Check here. If you want to list out the other places where the "facts on rwd" is used click here and see it for yourself.

Update 29-July-2010:

  Here are some more domains: www.factsonrwd.m.gp www.factsonrwdpalm.m.gp www.factsonrwd.m.gp www.rwdpalm.m.gp www.rwdchennai.m.gp - all of them pointing to rwd's website.

Even more delays in RWD Fern

I wrote about the delays in the RWD Fern medavakkam project with the newspaper ad proofs on last September. In Dec 2008, they claimed that the project will be completed in 12 months - thats Nov 2009. 10 months later, in Sep 2008, instead of 1 month remaining as per the original schedule, they claimed that the project will take just 8 more months. Now 10 months after than in Jun 2010, where do they stand?

Thats right, the project is not even nearing completion and they quote that they will be completing it in 2 more months. Now think of it. With the original deadline of Nov 09, has not met and after a delay of 8 months, they still have not completed it. Any guesses about when they will handover the flats? On the other hand they have raised the prices to Rs 3250, up Rs 250 from the original price of Rs 2999 - at least thats what they quote. Last time I checked they came down to Rs 2000 per sq ft, this time they might come for a similar price.

3 years and still not handed over the house !

When I thought Prakash's case of 2 years was extreme, here comes another case. Ravi has posted in common floor that even after 3 years of delay, the house has not been handed over to him properly. Here is his message:

Response from the RWD on the progress of the pending work’s on my flat is not at all satisfactory. It is really desperate to state that I have not received any proper updates on the list submitted items, even after several personal requests. The total duration gone as of now is substantial for completion of work.

It is really harder to accept that even after reminders and personal presence for the completion of the work it is still pending over the years(YES ITS YEARS). I have bought house late 2006 still not handed over or not even responding to my mails or phones. I never seen such a un-professional people.

As the PALM community i am posting this because i don't know how many of you facing this issue. Is there any group effort to fix these issues?

or going to legal is the only option left?

Ravi

Probably there might be more houses with even more delays. Until they come forward and tell us we may never know.

Why is RWD Palm & RWD Fern in Medavakkam not selling?

When they started RWD Palm in 2006, it was all glory when you visit the project. A walled community, only 170 houses, very nice model house, rightly priced, amenities from Swimming Pool to grocery stores in the community, a neatly finished model house, completion in 8 months, etc, etc. Come to present day. Its nearing 4 years and the project is not complete. Whats worse is they still have few houses to sell and no one is ready to buy with RWD. What went wrong?

(*) RWD is an immature company when it comes to residential projects. They do have constructed few commercial buildings, but residential buildings are a different case. Managing a commercial project is much easier, because you have only one customer for the whole building. In case of residential housing project like RWD Palm, each of the house owners booked at a different time. They had different preferences in interiors and had their own modifications. RWD couldn't simply manage all these houses which were coming up in different phases. One house might have gone to plastering stage, while the other one would have started digging for the basement. Essentially, the material management and personnel management becomes a little tough and they had no clue of how to manage - leading to inevitable delays

(*) Though the both newspaper & online advertisements were really nice and the stalls in the exhibitions were good, the word-of-mouth mode didn't work well. If I'm right they don't have any happy customers. Even my name is listed as a happy customer in the site, but believe me, I'm not a happy customer. Any prospect who talk to few of the the existing owners, would simply walk away from the project.

(*) RWD was too greedy. Only for the first phase of houses they had it rightly priced. Rest of the houses were way too high. A 1100 sq ft 2 BHK was charged at 50L. One cent land costs 3L to 5L in that area. Add Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 per sq ft for an engineer / construction company to build a house on that land. You do the math. The same house can be done in 25L to 30L. Did I mention that no need to wait for years and you can build it in 4 months flat?

(*) All the promises were broken. They advertised and promised that the RWD Palm project is a small community of 170 houses only. But then later, they introduced RWD Fern - the flats in the project to make more money. That increased the crowd in the community. They said all the amenities will owned by the Owners association. But it didn't happen that way. The Swimming Pool, Gym and other amenities are owned by RWD. Whats worse is, still after paying the a membership fees of Rs 20,000 to Rs 1,00,000 (depending on when you booked the house/flat), you have pay monthly Rs 600/- in the name of maintenance to use these facilities.All the Unisex Saloon, Cafeteria, and other few blah, blah blah they mention in the advertisement (even in the latest ad in Sep '09), doesn't even exist inside the compound.

(*) They act weird and have their own dumb reasons. They never think of the people who live there. The best example are the power crisis and water issue. With this attitude towards the customers, there is no wonder they are no selling the houses and apartments.

Anyways, The RWD Palm & Fern in Medavakkam is a huge flop for them. Unless they realize the mistakes from the past and correct them, their future projects are also going to be similar disaster.

Questions to ask RWD marketing people

If you are looking to buy a property in Medavakkam, Chennai and zeroed in to RWD Palm villa or RWD Fern flat, hold on. Thanks to on going global crisis and the downtrend of real estates, you can negotiate and bring down the prices to 2/3 of the value they quote (Rs 2,999 to Rs 2,000 per sq ft) I'll give you few questions to ask. Take a printout of this and ask the marketing people one-by-one. Look at the response and then you can probably bring down the price by another 500 bucks. Or even more if you are good negotiator!

• Initially, did you promise the owners of the villas that there won't be any apartments and the entire site is only for the RWD Palm? Then why did you break the promise and added the apartments inside the complex?
  
  
• It seems that many of the villas had quality issues, esp the water is leaking from the tanks & roof into the houses. Is that true?
  
  
• Is it true that the most of the RWD Palm villas were delayed for more than 1 year? 
  
  
• In your advertisement in December 08, you said RWD Fern will be completed in 12 months. But now in September 09 you say it will be completed in 8 months. Does it means its running into delays already? How do I trust you to finish it in another 8 months?
  
  
• In the same December 08 ad, you said the special price of Rs 2,999/- per sq ft is applicable only for the first 50 customers and applicable only for those who book on that weekend. Now in September 09 you are still quoting the same price. Is that you have not even sold 50 apartments or the prices of your apartments have already gone down due to the delays and quality?
  
  
• For how many villas did you pay the penalty amount as specified in the agreement?
  
  
• If RWD Palm is called a gated community, why are the roads, childrens play area, jogging track, park are owned by Municipality?
  
  
• Despite every resident paying club membership of 1L, why is it that RWD will own the Gym, Swimming Pool and other amenities? Ideally shouldn't it be owned by the Owners association?
  
  
• Why is that every resident has to pay the maintenance of the amenities owned by RWD? Why can't RWD charge only the people who are using the facilities?
  
  
• It appears that the water from the common well is stopped by RWD for no reasons. Why is RWD not getting water connections from the Panchayat?
  
  
• The transformer is already maxed out with only 100 houses in RWD Palm. One additional transformer is added to cater the current need. If more people move in, especially when RWD Fern is completed, we will definitely need another transformer. When are you installing it?
  
  
• Even after handing over nearly 100 houses, why is RWD refusing to form the Owners association?
  
  
• Is it true that someone has filed a case against RWD in the Consumer Court?
  

Delays in RWD Fern, Medavakkam Project

If you are in Chennai, you would have very less chances to miss the 4 page exclusive advertisement in The Hindu Property plus on Dec 20th 2008 for the "luxury budget apartments" - RWD Fern in Medavakkam. Ignoring the nice oxymoron, have a look at the key features (click the images for a bigger picture):

 

"Delivery in 12 months", that is what they claimed in the ad. 10 months have gone and you would think that the project would have been nearing completion now. But look at the advertisement in the same The Hindu Property plus on 5th Sep 09:

Yes, now they say that the completion would take another 8 months! Ha ha. Delays are nothing new to RWD. When they started the Palm project (in 2006) the assurance was for 8 months, but they kept on dragging it for years to complete the houses. The project has 170 houses, and as they claim from the above advertisement, only 100 of them are complete (actually its only around 75. Nearly 100 houses are still incomplete - thats over a delay of three years and counting) Judging by the delays they made for a ground +1 floor project of 3 years, this project with ground + 4 floors will easily take 5 years for handing over the keys.

In case you missed the other points, the original advertisement said the cost is Rs 2,999/- only per sqft and that too its only for the first few customers who do spot booking on that weekend. I told you already that they will bring down the prices, as they look very high. Almost an year later, since there are no takers, the price they quote in the advertisement is still Rs 2,999/- and its negotiable to a great extend. They won't quote me the real selling price, so I asked my friend to enquire posing as a prospect and check on the prices. When he negotiated, they came down to Rs 2,000/- per sqft. Probably they might come more if you are a tough negotiator. No matter how cheap you get the apartment for, remember, when you get is more important!!!

Case filed against RWD in Consumer Court

RWD made an out of the court settlement with Prakash on this case. Upon his request, I'm deleting this blog entry.

Imp: Water issue in RWD Palm

CommonFloor is a private portal for Owners and Residents of Housing Societies and Apartment Complexes. RWD Palm also has its presence there. Many house owners and residents have already joined there and its a very useful portal. To join visit www.commonfloor.com and search for RWD Palm or send a mail to Prakash (grprakash@gmail.com)

Today Prakash has posted a notice about the ongoing water issue:

Hi,

        As most of you know, RWD has stopped the water from the panchayat well to many of the houses, citing no reasons so far. I called Ganesan and he is not aware of the reasons. Initial thought was that the water was stopped for those who had pending payments, but talking with few other owners revealed that it is not the case. Even those who had paid the amount in full and regularly paying the maintenance charges also got hit by this.

        Talking with Krihnamoorthy/David is of no use as they said its done by the upper management and we have to talk only to them. However Haja is not talking up any calls.
     
        I've been talking to few other owners and discussing the possibility of pooling the money to get lorry water or getting the panchayat water connection. Do you have any other ideas?
      
        Before that I believe that this website is an appropriate place to discuss than emails. Members can opt in for getting all these updates thru mail or they can visit the website when they have time and check for updates. All the discussions are in open, there is nothing to be hidden. Best of all, your email id/phone number is not known to anyone, so your privacy is secured. I would encourage to ask your neighbours to join this one. They can directly join by searching RWD from the home page(commonfloor.com) or can mail me (grprakash@gmail.com) I'll add them as members.
      
Thanks for your time,
Prakash

RWD refusing to pay the default amount

In 2006 when RWD started the Palm project, there weren't many takers due to the high pricing of the houses. For the same price, other developers were providing facilities like modular kitchen, interiors etc, where as RWD promised only the bare boned house. Also this was the first residential project for them, so there is no proof of how they would execute this. Despite this, what attracted me to the project was

(*) The finishing quality of the model house was really good
(*) Very less number of houses for the given area (170 houses in 9 acres)
(*) Gated community with all the amenities
(*) If the project is delayed, we will be getting a 12% interest for the number of days delayed.

Now at the end, it looks like I made the wrong choice.  

(*) The model house finishing is not the same as what we get. For example, the model house ceiling had a wonderful putty finish. But the actual houses don't get that. There are numerous examples like this
(*) They introduced RWD Fern apartments inside the project which will increase the number of households by another 120
(*) Now RWD says that they own the amenities like Gym & Swimming Pool and not the Owners Association. Also the rest of the amenities like children park & jogging track are owned by the municipality. Its no point in calling a gated community
(*) The last point sucks. Even though the project is delayed by 2 years, no one has got the penalty amount as promised in the agreement. They play it differently, even for the small changes that we request in the houses are billed with enormous amount and it comes to a total of Rs 75,000/- and they will say they will waive the amount in lieu of the penalty amount (which is several times of that 75k). For people who demanded the penalty amount, they simply refused to give and they insisted that they have to pay the 75k first. On seeing this, many people preferred to do that as they don't want to pay the 75k. So they do not honor what is there in the agreement.

I was told that they have become more experienced now. So for the new houses they are selling in RWD Palm and the flats in RWD Fern, they mention that the deadline thats much more relaxed. If they complete on the deadline no worries. If there is a delay, then RWD will pay the penalty (this time its not 12%, rather some per sq ft calculation) and if they complete earlier, the client has to pay the "bonus" to RWD (same per sq ft calculation). I have never seen a builder saying that if I complete before the time, you pay me extra! These guys...

Power crisis in RWD Palm & RWD Fern

When the project was initially planned, it was promised to all the buyers that the number of houses will be less. But then since they couldn't sell many of the houses, RWD changed their plans and decided to go ahead with apartments instead of Villas in Phase 3. This is creating a lot of problems and the latest one is electricity. For the whole colony only one 250KVA Transformer is installed. This is just adequate for the residents needs. With more number of houses being occupied and summer is heating up, the transformer fuse blows out when many people switch on the ACs. There has been incidents where there is no power for the whole night and sometime whole day on the weekends when the power consumption reaches its height. Residents have contacted RWD for installing another transformer but there is no positive reply from them yet.

Hidden costs in RWD Fern

Don't get fooled by the "14 Lakhs only" tag for the apartments (which is actually for a carpet area of a 420 sq foot apartment). Here are the hidden costs which are not mentioned in the ad:

• Car parking - 1.75 Lakhs
  
• Club membership - 1 Lakhs
  
• Corpus fund: 25 k
  
• EB/Water/Drainage: 75 k

Oh add the 9% registration fees, it would roughly cost you 5 Lakhs more than the specified amount.

Interesting fact is the club membership was just 25k for the villas and for apartments its a whopping 1 Lakh. For using the same facility, why should someone end up paying 4 times more than others?

And the ad also says that the price is applicable only for the first 50 bookings. So what happens for the rest? Don't worry, so far only 15 bookings, so for the rest of apartments the price will surely come down.

Facts on RWD Palm and RWD Fern

RWD Palm has announced their plans for apartments (RWD Fern) along side of the villas. A very big hype was created with the 4 page supplement to The Hindu's Saturday edition (Properties Plus is also issued on Satudays) If you are interested in this project, ask these following questions:

• The promised timeframe for the villas was 8 months. Was there at least a single villa which was delivered in time?
  
• Is there any one who got the villas within an year at least?
  
• For those who have received the villa, did they have any complaints?
  
• For how many villas, the water tank is leaking? (seriously not kidding - ask this!)
  
• They promised a bore well for every individual villa. How many of them have water?
  
• The very first villas from the first phase were built with quality materials. Why was the quality degraded in phase two? (like Godrej locks were replaced by un-branded locks; fly ash bricks instead of clay bricks; etc) What will be quality of the materials used in the apartments? Still worse?
  
• Is it true that if you hit a big nail in the wall, the entire wall tends to shake? An engineer reported that the walls are not watered properly after cementing. Is that a fact?
  

Oh yeah! there are still a lot of them. If you are really interested in knowing the facts, just knock the doors of the residents and ask them. You will get more stories.

[Update]
The comments below by a person called Srinivasan/Pranav is purely marketing. He is also running a blog called Chennai Properties where he advertises about RWD. He should be an RWD Employee. Readers be warned. I've also removed few other marketing type comments.