Congratulations! Your dream home is ready to be handed over. Lucky you! You are better off than a lot of Indian home-buyers who are still waiting for their developers to complete construction and start with handover. Life in the post RERA world might fix this but for now the wait continues for most of us. Nevertheless, your developer is different. Your house is ready, just take possession and live happily ever after. Right?
Wrong! Taking possession of the house is one thing, living in it happily ever after is another. The attention you pay during the handover process is extremely important otherwise your house of dreams can become the house of horrors very soon. The sure shot way of getting into trouble is to accept the house as is. I know all of us are excited to take the keys from the builder but not paying attention to the condition of the house gets us in trouble very soon. You must make sure that you verify the conditions of the house either by yourself or with the help of an expert. There typically are issues with a new house in the areas of plumbing, electricity, structural etc that are only caught by carefully examining the house (visually and with the necessary tools). If this verification isn’t done, these issues start causing significant damage forcing you to spend time and money in fixing them in the not so distant future. We all remember the adage – A stich in time saves nine and this is extremely pertinent when it comes to taking possession of the home. Imagine a situation when you have moved into the home with all your belongings and you realize that the plumbing is faulty, will cause damage to your things and need to be fixed ASAP. Taking time off to get these issues fixed is inconvenient but finding quality handymen to fix these issues and monitoring them is a big pain indeed. What happens if the electrical safety mechanisms in the house dont work? What happens to the safety of you and your loved ones. You get the drift.
Make sure your eyes and ears (and preferably those of an expert with you) are wide open during the handover process. Find every issue and get it fixed before you move in. Save those 9 stitches. That is the only way to live happily ever after! Have a great Griha – Pravesh indeed!
