The Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) yesterday said that as early as February next year, buyers of pre-sales real estate will receive contract guarantees to better protect them in the event the developer fails to deliver or declares bankruptcy.
In the past, disputes over sales of uncompleted housing property, known as pre-sales real estate, between developers and home buyers have arisen when residential projects scheduled to be completed by a certain date were not delivered as promised or developers ran out of money and collapsed.
The commission and the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) plan to amend contracts for pre-sales real estate to establish a set of rules on contract guarantees that will take effect eight months after the MOI makes the announcement, the CPC’s legal division director Chiu Hui-mei (邱惠美) said.
Real-estate developers can agree to the MOI-established contract guarantee or provide an alternative form of guarantee, as long as the developer obtains consent from the home buyer. For example, a developer may promise in the pre-sales real-estate contract to return the contract price in the event that the firm fails to deliver the property. Another alternative is that the developer and the buyer agree that the contract price goes directly into a trust fund to avoid buyers running the risk of having the funds siphoned off or not returned if the terms of the sales contract are violated.
In other news, the CPC said credit card holders who pay the minimum amount will soon be charged interest on only the balance, not the full amount indicated on the monthly billing statement.
Currently, credit card users who make only the minimum payment by the due date are charged a cyclical interest rate on the full amount due, which is calculated starting from the date of each purchase. Once the new regulations go into effect, credit card users will only be charged interest rates on the remaining balance that is not paid in full. However, interest rates will still be calculated starting on the date of each purchase, rather than the date on which payment is due.
Chiu said the new regulations would also require banking institutions to notify or remind customers who fail to make credit card payments five days before a bad record is made on the customer’s credit history, giving customers a grace period to protect their credit.
The CPC will also prohibit credit card companies from detailing in the contract that the secondary card holder must assume the debt that is owed in the event that the main card holder fails to make payments.
The CPC said the new regulations would go into effect as early as the end of this month.
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