Carpet, built-up and super built-up area

The three areas

Carpet area. Under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, carpet area is "the net usable floor area of an apartment, excluding the area covered by the external walls, areas under services shafts, exclusive balcony or verandah area and exclusive open terrace area, but includes the area covered by the internal partition walls of the apartment."

Built-up area. The carpet area plus the walls; older agreements often add the balcony. It has no single legal definition, so check what your document includes.

Super built-up area. The built-up area plus a share of the common areas — staircases, lifts, lobbies, corridors and sometimes the clubhouse. The added share is called loading, and it varies from project to project.

Since RERA, an agreement for the sale of a new flat must state its carpet area; exclusive balconies and terraces are listed separately.

A worked example

Take a flat with a carpet area of 1,000 sq ft. With the walls, its built-up area might be about 1,150 sq ft; with 40 % loading on the carpet area, its super built-up area is 1,400 sq ft. If similar flats sell at ₹5,000 per sq ft of super built-up area, the flat is worth 1,400 × ₹5,000 = ₹70 lakh — the same as ₹7,000 per sq ft of carpet area. Apply the ₹5,000 rate to the 1,000 sq ft carpet area instead and you would arrive, wrongly, at ₹50 lakh.

The figures are illustrative. A valuation report states the area basis it uses — normally the one in your title document — and keeps the rate on the same basis.

Units of land and floor area

In Gujarat, plots are usually described in square yards (vaar), and the 7/12 extract records land in hectare–are–square metre. A bigha or vigha differs from district to district — take its size from the local revenue record, not from a website.

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