For many of us, this aspect of realty is hard to understand. But it is the most important factor one should consider while shopping around for a new home.
Here is a simple, logical way of going about these jargon's that the Real Estate agents and companies use while trying to lure you into a purchase.
Carpet Area, like the name suggests, is the area within the house where you can actually put a carpet. It does not include the thickness of the interior walls, balcony area, utility area, etc. It is the actual usable space inside the house and hence should be carefully considered while choosing a property. It is also referred to as livable area.
Nowadays many builders don’t even mention the carpet area upfront and usually charge customers based on built-up area or even super built-up area. Generally, carpet area is 70% of the built-up area.
When you add the balcony/ utility room/ miscellaneous areas plus the thickness of inner walls to the carpet area, you get built-up area. It is also commonly referred to as the ‘total area’ of the house.
It is the built-up area plus the proportion of common areas such as elevator, lobby, staircase, corridor, etc. The builder may sometimes even choose to add amenities such as swimming pool, games room, walkway, garden and even the clubhouse to the proportion of common area thus enhancing the super built-up area. Thus it is only quite natural that the builder will try to charge you based on the super built-up area to get more money out of a housing unit.
We can summarize the area’s under consideration as below,
Super built-up area > Built-up area > Carpet area
The newly constituted RERA guidelines mandates builders and real estate developers to publish/ disclose the carpet area of the unit in all documents related to the project, hence leaving out any case of confusion. Though it is published or disclosed, the builders may still prey on unsuspecting customers who are not aware of the difference between these areas.
The whole process of shopping around, visiting and shortlisting a property can be a tedious and time-consuming affair. Adding to this there are a lot of confusing rules and regulations. But you can certainly make an educated decision by being informed about the various areas in square footage.
