How are Carpet, Built-Up and Super Built-Up Areas Calculated?

You are likely to frequently encounter terms like carpet area, built-up area, and super-built-up area when looking for a property to buy or rent. As a first-time house hunter, these terms may need to be clarified. You might even use them interchangeably. However, these words do not indicate the same things. Developers and brokers mean different things when they use such terminology. Knowing what each of these phrases stands for is crucial to making an informed decision when looking for a property. Find out the difference between these terms here.

Carpet Area

The name itself clarifies that carpet area stands for the area of the house that you can cover with a carpet. More precisely, this is a property’s net usable area (NUA). It includes the area of all the rooms (living room, dining room, bedroom, and study) and the area of the bathrooms and kitchen.

It is important to note that the Real Estate Regulatory Authority Act includes the area covered by internal partition walls of a unit in calculating the carpet area. However, it excludes any area covered by the external walls, spaces under services shafts, the balcony, the verandah and any open terrace area, according to the ICICI Bank website. In other words, the carpet area calculation covers the private space of the home and excludes any common or shared spaces. Usually, the carpet area is about 70 percent of the built-up area of the property.

Built-up Area

The built-up area calculation includes all spaces meant for the owner’s (or rentee’s) exclusive use. In addition to the carpet area, it also takes into account the area covered by walls, balconies, terraces, and exclusive corridors. The built-up area does not take into consideration shared or common spaces. The built-up area traditionally constitutes roughly 30 percent of the whole property.

Super-built-up Area

This includes the area covered by common spaces like lifts, gyms, corridors, and clubhouses in addition to the built-up area of the property. It is not the whole area covered by these spaces, but the proportion of the area that belongs to the owner that is calculated in the super-built-up area.

The Mint reported that Santhosh Kumar, vice chairman of – ANAROCK Group said that selling properties based on super built-up area is now illegal. “The hitherto conventional practice of developers charging homebuyers on the basis of the super built-up area no longer works. Under the Rera Act, the quoted price has to be mandatorily based on the carpet area of the property,” he said.

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