The Icon Faridabad · Buyer Q&A
What is the difference between Carpet Area, Built-up Area, and Super Built-up Area?
Why three different numbers exist
Developers historically marketed properties on Super Built-up Area because it produced the highest sellable area and thus the lowest per-sq.ft. rate — a packaging trick that made pricing look more attractive than it was. RERA changed this: under the 2016 Act, every developer must disclose the Carpet Area to the buyer before booking, and the agreement-to-sale must specify Carpet Area as the binding measure. Built-up and Super Built-up can still be used in marketing, but the buyer's legal entitlement is denominated in Carpet Area.
Carpet Area — what's actually included
Carpet Area is the usable internal area of the unit excluding the thickness of walls. It includes rooms, kitchen, bathrooms (commercial: customer-facing floor + back-of-house), and any internal storage. It excludes external walls, balconies, terraces and shafts. On a commercial unit, Carpet Area is what matters to a tenant — they can only operate within it. When evaluating rental yield, calculate against Carpet Area, not Super Built-up, to get the true per-usable-sq.ft. economics.
Built-up Area — Carpet + walls + balconies
Built-up Area is Carpet Area plus the thickness of walls (internal and external partition shares) plus balconies, utility ledges and any covered terraces. It's typically 10-15% larger than Carpet Area. For commercial units, Built-up Area is occasionally used as the basis for some calculations (e.g. some property-tax assessments), but it's less commonly the sales basis in current RERA-compliant disclosures.
Super Built-up Area — the developer's headline number
Super Built-up Area is Built-up Area plus the buyer's proportionate share of common areas: lobbies, lifts, staircases, club / amenity spaces, common circulation. The 'loading factor' (Super Built-up ÷ Carpet) typically ranges from 1.2 (modest commercial loading) to 1.5 (premium high-amenity projects). For comparison shopping, always normalise to Carpet Area: a unit at ₹28,000/sq.ft. on Super Built-up is far more expensive than the same headline rate on Carpet.
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