Highlighting how over one-third of the real estate advertisements examined by the self-regulatory body for advertising industry were found misleading, a pan-India home buyers organisation has urged the consumer affairs department to issue targeted guidelines for real estate advertising to safeguard consumers' interests.
The Forum for People’s Collective Efforts (FPCE) has also flagged the average penalty for misleading advertisements by Maharashtra RERA is barely Rs 14,000-Rs 15,000 which is unlikely to deter violators.
In its letter to the department, the homebuyers’ body has attached the findings from a recent report of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), which revealed that around 34% of the advertisements analysed by it between April and September this year from Maharashtra’s real estate sector were found to be in “direct violation of the law”.
The FPCE said that the ASCI has screened the advertisements on a very limited set of parameters as advised by MahaRERA. “We have absolutely no doubt that if they had screened the advertisements from the point of view of consumers, they would have found 100% of the advertisements misleading,” it said.
The letter mentioned that ASCI, in February, had signed an agreement with MahaRERA to scan and address misleading advertisements in the real estate sector. “Out of the total 2,115 advertisements screened by ASCI from the real estate sector, they found 1,027 advertisements to be misleading, which comes to 48.6%. ASCI received prompt compliance in 59% of the cases where advertisers either modified their advertisements or completely withdrew it,” it added.
The ASCI reviewed the compliance with mandatory disclosure norms, including the presence of registration numbers, QR codes, and other essential information. As per the letter, some 628 non-compliant advertisements were flagged to MahaRERA by ASCI which in turn levied penalty on the real estate developers to the tune of Rs 88.9 lakh.
