Understanding Carpet, Built-up and Super Built-up Area

The three definitions

• Carpet area — the usable floor area inside your walls, excluding external walls, shafts, balcony and terrace as defined under RERA. This is the space you live in.
• Built-up area — carpet plus the walls of your unit, and usually balcony area.
• Super built-up area — built-up plus your share of common spaces: lobby, staircase, lift shaft, clubhouse, services.

The gap between carpet and super built-up is the loading factor. At 25% loading, a 1,000 sqft super built-up flat gives you 750 sqft of carpet. At 40% loading, only 600 sqft.

A worked comparison

Two flats, both quoted at ₹8,000 per sqft super built-up, both 1,200 sqft:

• Flat A, 27% loading → 876 sqft carpet → effective ₹10,959 per carpet sqft.
• Flat B, 38% loading → 744 sqft carpet → effective ₹12,903 per carpet sqft.

Same headline rate. Flat A is 18% cheaper for the space you actually use.

What RERA requires

Price and area disclosures must be on carpet area. Brochures may still show super built-up for comparison, but the agreement should state carpet area, balcony area and any exclusive open terrace separately.

How to verify

1. Ask for carpet, balcony and super built-up figures in writing for your exact unit.
2. Compute the loading factor yourself.
3. On site, measure two rooms against the drawing — small deviations are normal, large ones are not.
4. Check whether the parking area is bundled into the quoted area.

Our practice

UrbanEarth price sheets state carpet, balcony and super built-up per unit, with the loading factor printed — so comparison across projects is honest.