Bhubaneswar: Delays in enforcing the Odisha Real Estate Regulation and Development Rules, 2017, has brought about a slump in the city's real estate sector.

The housing and urban development department framed the rules under the Centre's Real Estate Regulation Act (Rera) that came into force in the state from July 1 last year. The objective was to bring transparency in the sector by providing homebuyers an upper hand and force the developers to follow rules.

The department is yet to put in place several components under the rules that includes development of a separate website to provide information about the rules to the developers and the public. In its absence, people are still unaware of the rules' benefits.

The improper implementation of the rules has hit real-estate developers here the hardest. The rules make it mandatory for developers to register their projects. The slow progress in registration, leading to delays, has forced them to pay premium interest to financial institutions.

"The rules bar developers from advertising or taking bookings without registration. The financiers have also refused to finance projects that were booked before the act came into effect without registration," said D.S. Tripathy, president of the Odisha chapter of Confederation of Real-Estate Developer's Association of India (Credai).

He said other states followed the online process and gave registrations in a time-bound manner. However, only a handful of projects have been registered in nine months. "Rera is only applicable for ongoing projects, but registration process of all completed projects was stopped in the absence of occupancy certificates," said Tripathy.

The rules aim to protect consumer interest in terms of timely completion of projects or amenities offered by the developers in ongoing projects by discarding completed ones from its ambit. "To deal with such a situation, some states allow registration by considering holding tax, electricity bills, society registration," said a member of Credai.