Now, pay only for your living space

In a customer-friendly move, the ministry for housing and urban poverty alleviation (HUPA) has reiterated that only carpet area will be recognised in the forthcoming Housing Regulatory Bill proposed by the government.

This means that customers will get to know the exact living space in an apartment that he is buying unlike the present wherein factors as plinth, super built-up area etc come into play.

“The municipalities and the development authorities would have to pass the map on the basis of carpet area and this would be a mandatory requirement as any other criteria apart from that like the super area or the built-up area and others would not be recognised by us,” said HUPA secretary Arun Kumar Misra while addressing the ‘5th Affordable Housing Summit’ organised by Assocham in New Delhi

Averring that his ministry would go to states to advocate on adopting this policy guideline, the HUPA secretary said, “This is going to be the deciding factor because single-window clearance system, development control regulations, land availability issues, FAR & FSI issues are all handled at the state level and this can be done by a policy decision without costing any money to the states.” “This would ensure uniform pricing mechanism across the country so the customer is clearly aware of what he is bargaining for,” said T. Chitty Babu of Akshaya Homes, who was also the former secretary of Credai.

As most southern developers follow the carpet area format, this could impact northern developers where concepts as notional loading are being used, said N. Nandakumar, Credai, TN.