Who is the Owner of Your Residential Community’s Facilities?

By: Sumita Roy

When you buy an apartment in a residential project, you look for the exclusive amenities that it provides. But do you have full right over those provisions present in the common area of the community? No. These are actually owned by the builder. You need to pay taxes for the same but you do not own them. The builder group, if it chooses to do so, can transfer the ownership, which actually belongs to them, to any retailer who wants to make money out of it.

B.K. Dhawan, now a 75 years old owner of a unit in DLF’s Silver Oaks, Gurgaon, has recently lost a battle of twenty years against the builder group. In the year 1996, he, along with other residents of the community, came to know that DLF has planned to sell the commercial facilities present within the community area. They decided to appeal to the court because they believed that these facilities were provided exclusively to them and they owned them. They thought that it is the apartment owners’ right to lease out these facilities and earn money from it.

The Silver Oaks Condominium Association (SOCA) contested against the builder’s ownership claim over Silver Oaks and its commercial facilities and cited the real estate regulation acts- The Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act, 1975, and The Haryana Apartment Ownership Act, 1983- that state that residence owners have right over the common areas like corridors, lifts, lobbies as well as nursery schools, shops, recreational areas and so on. According to SOCA, once a project is completed, the builder should file a declaration before the concerned authority, stating the details of land, buildings, number of units, and everything present within the gated area.

However, the Supreme Court, in its much awaited judgment, has said that the apartment owners cannot claim undivided interest in the community and over its commercial facilities. These belong to the builder group. It is true that SOCA had tried in every way to convince the court, voicing their concerns regarding the safety and homogeneity of their complex. But it seems that these pleas were undermined and the law that the builder owns all the commercial facilities within the project community was upheld.