THE city’s consumer council unveiled 12 unfair clauses that are commonly seen in housing presale contracts, according to sznews.com.

According to the council, some property developers have tried to dodge their responsibilities by denying standard terms and adding exception clauses for themselves to presale contracts. They also excluded advertising materials from the contract offers and set unequal liabilities for themselves and homebuyers regarding breach of contract.

Some property developers overly expanded the scope of force majeure in their contracts. Some of the contracts specified that the property developers could entrust supervising companies hired by them instead of a third-party testing agency to check for quality problems in their property projects, which would fail to ensure the fairness of the test results.

According to the council, some property developers exempted themselves from notification obligations in their contracts and required homebuyers to make a one-off payment to buy the apartment if they failed to get a mortgage loan, which is contrary to the laws.

Some contracts illegally stipulated the property developers’ ownership of some common parts in the estates, such as the outer walls, roofs, lobbies, elevator lobbies and public lawns, which should be commonly owned by homeowners.

Additionally, some contracts required homebuyers to prepay property service fees before their apartments would be delivered, and some enabled the property developers to terminate the contract if the homebuyer failed to make a home-purchase payment on time regardless of the amount of the overdue payment.

(Zhang Yang)