Price Per Square Foot Calculator

One division, and a word that means four things

Price per square foot = Price / Area

That is the entire calculation, and it is the reason this measure exists: it takes two properties of different sizes and different prices and puts them on one scale so they can be argued about sensibly.

The calculator will do up to three at once, which is the right number, because most property decisions come down to a shortlist rather than a single flat.

The trouble is entirely in the second box.

Square footage sounds like a fact. In residential property it is a choice between at least four different measurements of the same flat, the largest of which can be nearly half as big again as the smallest. Get two listings quoted on different bases and the comparison this tool exists to enable is not a comparison at all.

So the rest of this page is mostly about the denominator.

Carpet, built-up, super built-up, and what the law did about it

Four terms, in ascending order of size, for one flat.

Super built-up is also called saleable area, which is a revealing name. It is the number developers historically quoted, because dividing the same price by a larger area produces a smaller and more attractive rate per square foot.

India legislated on this. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, in force from May 2017, defines carpet area at Section 2(k) as the net usable floor area of an apartment, excluding the area covered by external walls, areas under service shafts, exclusive balcony or verandah area, and exclusive open terrace area, but including the area covered by internal partition walls.

Three consequences of that definition are worth carrying into a site visit.

Registered projects must quote on carpet area. Pricing a sale against built-up or super built-up is not permitted for projects registered under the Act, and the carpet figure has to appear in the agreement.

Balconies are excluded but must be disclosed separately. So a balcony is not part of your carpet area, and the developer has to tell you its size on its own rather than folding it in.

Shortfall is refundable. If the carpet area delivered is less than what the agreement promised, the buyer is entitled to a refund of the excess paid with interest, and the usual window quoted is 45 days from possession. Increases are capped at a small percentage.

The traditional carpet area and the RERA definition differ slightly, since the older usage excluded internal wall thickness and the statutory one includes it. For a comparison between two flats the difference is small. For checking a figure against an agreement it matters, so use whichever the agreement uses.

The same flat, two rates, forty three percent apart

A flat priced at ₹1,00,00,000, with a carpet area of 1,000 square feet. At a typical loading, its super built-up area is around 1,429 square feet, since carpet tends to run near 70 percent of super built-up.

Same flat, same crore, same day. Just under seven thousand, or exactly ten thousand, depending on which number went in the second box.

The carpet rate is 42.9 percent higher, and it is the honest one, because it is the rate for space you can stand in.

Which makes the practical rule short. Before comparing two rates, find out what each one was divided by. A listing at 7,000 on super built-up and a listing at 9,000 on carpet are not what they appear: the second may well be the cheaper flat.

Converting between them is one multiplication if you know the loading. Divide the super built-up rate by the carpet-to-super ratio, so 6,998 divided by 0.70 gives 9,997, which is the carpet rate to within rounding.

Two flats, identical living space, twelve lakh apart

Here is the version of the problem that costs real money, and it is why the comparison mode on this calculator earns its place.

Two flats. Both offer exactly 1,000 square feet of carpet area. Both are quoted at ₹7,000 per square foot of super built-up area. Identical rate, identical usable space.

Twelve and a half lakh of difference for the same living space, and the advertised rate per square foot was identical on both.

The gap is loading, the share of common area a developer allocates to each flat. High loading means you are buying more corridor and less kitchen. It is not automatically bad, a building with generous lobbies and good lifts has a reason for it, but you should know what you are paying for it.

So the sequence when comparing shortlisted flats is: get the carpet area for each, get the total price for each, and divide. Run all three through this calculator on the carpet basis and the numbers become genuinely comparable, often for the first time.

If a developer will not give you a carpet figure, that is itself information.

The unit dropdown, and why it matters more than it looks

Each property has its own unit selector, offering square feet, square metres, square yards and square inches, and the calculator converts before dividing.

Having it per property rather than once for the whole form is deliberate and useful, because listings genuinely do arrive in different units. Builders in some Indian markets quote square feet, plan documents and government records often use square metres, and land in parts of the country is still discussed in square yards.

The conversions that come up:

Worth knowing what those do to a rate. A price of ₹7,000 per square foot is ₹75,347 per square metre. The two describe an identical flat at an identical price, and one of them looks ten times more alarming.

Which is a small warning about mixing units mid comparison. Enter one property in square metres and another in square feet without changing the dropdowns, and the resulting rates differ by a factor of about eleven while looking like a genuine finding.

One inconsistency in the current tool worth flagging so it does not confuse you: the first two properties display their rate to two decimal places, and the third to more. The underlying arithmetic is the same, only the display differs.

What a rate per square foot flattens

The measure is useful precisely because it reduces a property to one number. That is also its cost, and it is worth knowing what got reduced away.

Floor and view. The same flat on the third floor and the fourteenth can differ by a tenth or more in price, and neither the area nor the rate notices.

Layout efficiency. A thousand square feet arranged as three usable bedrooms is worth more than a thousand arranged around a wasteful corridor. Rate per square foot treats them identically.

Condition and age. A rate calculated on a new build and one calculated on a twenty year old flat needing work are not comparable without an allowance for the work.

What comes with it. Parking, particularly in Indian cities, is often priced separately and can be a substantial sum. So can club membership and preferential location charges. If one quoted price includes parking and another does not, the rates are not measuring the same purchase.

Everything outside the walls. Two flats at the same rate in the same city can sit twenty minutes apart in commute, which over a decade is worth more than most of the differences above.

So the honest use of this number is as a screening tool. It tells you which of your shortlist are in the same price bracket for the same space, which is genuinely hard to see from listings, and then you go and look at them.

For the wider question of whether the total price is affordable at all, our rent or buy calculator weighs the purchase against continuing to rent, and our payment calculator turns a price into a monthly instalment.

Questions people ask

Which area should I enter?

Carpet area, if you want the honest rate for space you can use. For a project registered under RERA the carpet figure must appear in the agreement, so it should be available on request.

What exactly is RERA carpet area?

Under Section 2(k) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, the net usable floor area of an apartment, excluding external walls, service shafts, exclusive balconies or verandahs and exclusive open terraces, but including internal partition walls.

What is loading?

The share of common area added to your carpet area to arrive at super built-up. At 70 percent efficiency you are buying about 43 percent more area than you can walk on. Lower loading means more of what you pay for is inside your flat.

Does the balcony count?

Not within RERA carpet area. Exclusive balcony and verandah area is specifically excluded and must be disclosed separately in the agreement.

What if the flat delivered is smaller than promised?

Under RERA, a shortfall in delivered carpet area entitles the buyer to a refund of the excess amount paid with interest, and buyers can raise the matter with their state RERA authority.

My listing is in square metres.

Set that property's dropdown to square metres and the calculator converts. One square metre is 10.7639 square feet, so a rate per square metre is about eleven times the rate per square foot for the same property.

Can I use it for rent rather than a purchase price?

Yes, the field accepts either. Rent per square foot is the standard measure for comparing commercial and office space, and it works the same way for flats.

Why compare three properties?

Because most decisions come down to a shortlist. Putting three on the same area basis at once is where the differences that listings hide become visible.

References

A note on the sources. The area definitions on this page are not industry custom, they are statutory in India: the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016 defines carpet area at Section 2(k), requires registered projects to quote and contract on that basis, obliges separate disclosure of exclusive balcony area, and gives buyers a right to a refund with interest where the delivered area falls short. That Act is the document to hold a developer to, and it is cited here in preference to any secondary summary of it. The unit conversions follow the international definitions of the yard and the foot maintained by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

1. Government of India, The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, Section 2(k), defining carpet area as the net usable floor area of an apartment excluding external walls, service shafts, exclusive balcony or verandah area and exclusive open terrace area, but including the area covered by internal partition walls. In force from 1 May 2017.
2. Government of India, The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, provisions requiring registered projects to disclose and contract on carpet area, and providing for refund with interest where the delivered carpet area falls short of the agreement.
3. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), for the definitions underlying the square metre, square yard and square foot conversions. https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811