Sunday, April 09, 2006

Looking for rented accomodation in Delhi - an incident

I will try to narrate an incident that happened when we (me and my room mate) tried to get a rented accomodation in delhi. I have been living in Delhi/NCR for 5 years now.

I came to delhi on 11th june 2001. The first place that i lived in was a small dark room with attached toilet and kitchen for 2800/-, single bachelor accomodation. There was a single small window thru which some light used to come into the room. Well, I was new to the city and so had no other choice than to live where-ever there is availability. I had to concentrate more on my job. To cut the story short and get directly to the point, i shifted 3 houses in a span of 4 years after the first one and now i am in the fifth house. So 5 houses in 5 years.

One of our room mates is getting married, so he will be moving out. Since then the cost per head will go up, me and my other room mate(the one who is NOT getting married) started looking for other options.

We got some information about a property from some of our collegues who were also looking for rented accomodation. We went down to the concerned property dealer and enquired about the same. On saturday that is 8.4.6 we were shown the house. The story starts from here.

The property dealer told us that the flat is of 5000/- pm rent, with 2 month deposit and 1 month advance to be paid at the time of signing the lease. Also the property dealer would take 1 month rent as his commission. Which was coming down to 20,000/- going out of our pockets in one go at the time of signing the lease. This looked manageable to us. So, went to take a look at the house.

Standing outside the house, the house owner talked to me and my room mate and enquired all about our family backgrounds and other stuff... Something around 30 minutes of interview. Then, we saw the house. It had 2 rooms, kitchen and a good balcony. Almost all switches were broken. No bulbs were there and blades of the fan were bent. OOPs!!!, we thought, we will manage that, since the rent was quite low.

Later, the house owner and us decided the sign up the lease that day itself. So we called him to the property dealers office at around 4:30 pm. And he came down at around 6 pm. Oh well big men are generally busy....

Then other things started coming into picture. Entry fees into the society was around 1000/- And monthly maintenance was around 200/-. Well, we agreed. And signed the lease. And then the main thing came into picture. They had written a rent of 6000/- on the lease. And we had signed the lease.

Oh well, the property dealer changed his words on the fly. Told us that he had told us that the rent was 5500/-. And then he took off. Made some excuse that there was some client waiting in his office. Left us and the house owner to fight over it. And we did argue over it. For a long time.

The house owner was a sick man. Tired to lease us the house for 5600/-, else would go to the court with the lease. If we did not agree then we will have to pay him at least 6000/- one month rent. He stood to gain 6000/- out of the deal by just getting us to sign the lease agreement. Well, we said that if the property dealer did not take his commission, then we will agree to the 5600/- rent per month. After a lot of haggling, we agreed and called up the property dealer to tell him about our agreement and about his NOT getting the commission.

I was 101% sure that the property dealer would never give up his commission. Well, still the house owner said that, they knew people who would NOT let the property dealer create a mess later. He was just bluffing big time. The property dealer was not there. We re-did the lease. Changed the rent amount and signed everywhere.

We took the money out from our pockets and were about to give the house owner when the property dealer came into the picture. And he said that there is no way he would give up his commission. And we kept the money back in our pockets. Now, the house owner and property dealer had a fight. And we came to know a lot of things.
-> The previous resident of the house had not been given back his 2 month deposit.
-> There are certain complaints against the house owner in the local police stations.
-> The house was not worth more than 5500/-
-> The house owner would have created a lot of problems later.

Well, when ego comes in the picture, lots of things change. The house owner tore the lease agreement. And we became free of any bondage or legal implications. If you look at it from an audience point of view, you would see that the moment when the property dealer came into the picture was exact. If he would have been even a second late, we would have handed over the money to the house owner and would have hence been doomed/caught in the web. If he would have been early, we would NOT have altered the agreement and would still have been bound up by the lease and would have had to shell out some money.

This incident taught us a few things...
-> There are people in this world who could do anything for money. The house owner had his own businesses. Drove a big car. But would argue over Rs 50/- worth of lease paper. He got the Rs 50/-, he spent for the lease agreement from the property dealer.
-> NEVER sign any paper without reading the contents thoroughly.
-> Do not trust property dealers. Or for the matter any dealer. A marketing/sales person would do anything to sell.
-> Property dealers do not have any character. They never stick to their word. After promising also, the property dealer did not return the 300/- advance we had given him.
-> Believe only in written facts.
-> Never give any advance to any property dealer or any dealer. No matter what
happens, the money would not be returned.

We did learn a big lesson that day. Saw the true face of people. And by chance escaped someone, who maybe, would never have had lost a deal.

3 comments:

Kapil Chhabra said...

What a narrow escape!!!
Though I could not understand why the landlord tore the agreement, it was good for you none-the-less.
Be more careful next time.

btw, why dont you get in touch with someone from 99acres.com?

gamegeek said...

Well, we gave up the idea of getting a new home for the time being...

Next time, we will totally avoid property dealers and go either thru 99acres or thru ads in papers...

A chaotic mind.... said...

Jayant, this was horrendous....Sorry bro, u had to go through this...
Never mind, since I am also looking for 2 2bhk kindaa accommodation, can you provide any inputs that shall be useful for me...

Regards,
Raghav