HYDERABAD: The much-hyped Maytas Hill County project of the Ramalinga Raju family-promoted Maytas Properties has reached a dead end giving property  buyers sleepless nights.

Reeling under the brunt of the Satyam scam and the consequent cash crunch, the fate of the project is now in a limbo, and chances of its completion now look grim.
 
Hill County is spread across 376 acre comprising 840 apartments spread over 11 towers and 326 villas. The project was launched in 2005 with flats priced between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1.5 crore with independent units costing between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 2.5 crore.  The construction of independent bungalows was supposed to have been completed by the third quarter of 2008-09 and apartments by the first quarter of FY10.

The Maytas management has maintained that the project is very solvent, that receivables, inventory and land bank owned by the company are together much higher in value than all liabilities.  However, in spite of repeated attempts made by UTVi to contact the Mayats management, they were not available for comment opn the matter.

Experts, however, feel that consumers do not have too many options at the moment.
George Johnson of JLLM said: "They can pool in money themselves and complete the project or wait for the investigations to get over."
 
Property owners are demanding that the construction work be completed in a definite time period or their money be refunded. They have also approached the state government for intervention even suggesting a legal takeover of the project by some other competent firm but looks like it will take a long while before the fight gets over.