Planning to buy a house apartment so you should know about some common terms that used in real estate market and confused about the terms used in Real Estate Regulatory Authorities (RERAs)? Here is describe the most common terms which could help sort out basic doubts related to the industry.
What is Carpet area?
Carpet area refers to net usable floor area that can be actually used, in other terms the enclosed floor plan within external walls of the house that can be spread a carpet. Carpet area does not include the space used by external and thickness of the inner walls, balcony, utility area, open terrace area, staircases, veranda, but it takes into account the area stretching across private terrace cupboard space, kitchen, bathrooms as a part of the main or the actual area.

What is Built-Up Area / Plinth Area?
Built-up area term denotes the square inch of the house from the internal and external walls to carpet area, including terrace and balcony. Conversely, an addition of 10 to 15 % space to the carpet area becomes the built-up area. It is not including the area of a pool, garden or clubhouse, lobby, lift.

Built up Area = Carpet Area + 20% of carpet area
Built-up area = Carpet area + area of walls + area of balcony / terrace
Super built-up area –
The super built-up area is the total sum of the built-up area and the space occupied by common areas like lifts, corridors, lobby, staircase, elevator, shafts, clubhouse, etc which are divided proportionately between all the flats within the building. Generally, builders and contractor mention the super built-up area to promote and also apply the charge based on this area to cover their cost of construction and development cost. Payment is made on “SUPER BUILT UP AREA”. It can be calculated by adding a loading factor to the carpet area, which may also vary from 20% to 50% .

Super Built-up Area = Carpet area + Loading Factor
“Loading Factor can be defined as the area which includes the proportionate share of the common area for a flat which is calculated by applying a multiplier to the carpet area. In the calculation of Loading factor generally builders include space around staircases and elevators as common areas”.
Loading Factor
Floor Space Index (FSI) –
Floor Space Index, also known as Floor Area Ratio (FAR), is the ratio of Built-up area to available plot area actually allotted (land). This means if the FSI / FAR is high, then the build-up area also can be larger. This numeric value indicates the total amount of area on all floors including, kitchen and bathrooms.
Open Space Ratio (OSR) –
The terminology Open Space Ratio (OSR) is generally used in the development of residential spaces. OSR is proportion of the total open space to the area of the total land parcel. Areas on private plots which are buildable and any commonly owned open space that is less than 320 contiguous square feet are not counted as open spaces. The open space ratio is the amount of open space required on a residential area in non-contextual region. It is expressed as a percentage of the total floor area on that region.
Open Space Ratio OSR% of Building Floor Area (in Square feet) is equals to Square Footage of required open space on the property.