Delay: Penalty for developers?

Extract from Arabianbusiness.com: Question asked to RERA boss Bin Ghalaita

Have you thought about introducing a penalty for developers who are late delivering?

Yes, I like this idea. But the way it is… when we introduced the laws, developers already existed. Contracts had already been signed. If you sign a contract, it is a contractual agreement, between you and the developer. I cannot introduce new articles or amendments to those contracts. But what we are doing is, we are already by law giving penalties to a developer if they are late or if they don’t submit documents. About AED10,000. And I have a penalty up to half a million I can impose on the developer. Half a million, and then I can make it a million, and then I can make it a million and a half.

But this is all regulation penalty, if they don’t share information with me, if they do a fraud on an investor… If they play tricks with the progress report. But if they are late, we are doing a new step now, at the Land Department we are introducing the Real Estate Investor Protection Law, and we are telling all the developers for the new contract: ‘if you are putting a penalty on the investor, you should put a penalty on yourself. It should be equal.’ And this is coming very soon, and we are encouraging all investors to ask for this clause in their contracts.

More:http://www.arabianbusiness.com/the-regulator-366578.html?page=2