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.