Carpet Area vs Super Built Up Area, and What the ACE Arte Price List Does Not Say

1,927 sq.ft. That is the figure ACE Arte's price list W.E.F. 21-08-2026 prints against the 3 BHK, marked "Tentative Sizes*". Nowhere on the sheet does it say what those square feet measure. Two websites can quote that same apartment, agree on the price to the rupee, and describe floor areas hundreds of square feet apart, because they are measuring different things and only one of those things has a legal definition.

What the Act defines as carpet area, and what it leaves undefined

One clause, and it is worth reading in the original rather than in a summary.

Read it as a subtraction. Out go the external walls, the service shafts, your own balcony or verandah, and your own open terrace. Stays in: everything you can walk on inside, plus the internal partition walls. That last inclusion surprises people who expect carpet area to mean literal floor you could carpet. It does not. It is a defined term, and the definition includes the thickness of your internal walls.

Note what the definition does with a balcony. Your balcony is excluded from carpet area, but it is not excluded from existence. Section 4(2)(h) of the same Act requires a promoter's registration application to state "the number, type and the carpet area of apartments for sale in the project along with the area of the exclusive balcony or verandah areas and the exclusive open terrace areas ...", the clause running on from there. Three separate figures, disclosed separately. If someone hands you one number, you are missing two.

Super built up area, by contrast, is not under the law at all. On 4 September 2026 we searched the full text of the Act as UP-RERA publishes it, and the full text of the model Agreement for Sale prescribed under the UP Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (Agreement for Sale/Lease) Rules, 2018. Neither document contains the phrase "super built up". Neither contains "built up area". Neither contains the word "saleable". You can repeat the search in about a minute with the find function of any PDF reader.

That absence is the whole point. Carpet area means one thing because Parliament said so. Super built up area means whatever the person quoting it has decided to add to your carpet: a share of the lobby, the lift core, the stairwell, the club, the corridor, sometimes the pump room. The additions are called the loading. Because no statute fixes the loading, two projects can quote the same super built up figure and hand over noticeably different homes.

A regulator has written this down. The Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority, Gurugram, framed the Sale of Apartments/Floors in a Real Estate Project on the basis of Carpet Area Regulations, 2021, made on 7 May 2021 and published in the Haryana Government Gazette of 18 May 2021, which we read at haryanarera.gov.in/regulations/regulations_carpet_Area.pdf on 4 September 2026. Its opening reasoning records that "The definition of super area as provided in various builder-buyer agreements is vague and there are vide wide variations in the definition", and that a property "is not properly described by way of mentioning super area without specifically giving details and breakup of the components included in the super area". That regulation binds Gurugram district in Haryana. It does not govern Noida. We cite it because it is the clearest published statement by an Indian regulator of what the term does and does not carry, not because it applies here.

So how far apart can the two numbers be? Far enough to change which home you thought you were buying. The arithmetic is simple: if a quoted size carries a loading of L, the carpet area is the quoted size divided by (1 plus L).

Below, that arithmetic is run against ACE Arte's three printed tentative sizes at three loading assumptions. This is a worked illustration of arithmetic and nothing else. The price list names no area basis, so we do not know that any of these columns applies to ACE Arte. If the tentative sizes are already carpet area, the entire table is irrelevant to you, which is precisely why the question is worth asking rather than guessing.

Sizes as printed on ACE's price list W.E.F. 21-08-2026, described there as "Tentative Sizes*". Loading percentages are assumptions chosen to show the shape of the arithmetic; they are not sourced to any ACE document and are not a claim about this project.

Here is the part that gets lost in the alarm. The gap does not change what you pay. ACE's film publishes "Starting From ₹3.27 CRORE*" for the smallest home, and that total is the total whichever way the area is described. What the basis changes is the rate that describes it. ₹3.27 crore against 1,927 sq.ft reads as roughly ₹16,995 per sq.ft, which is the pre-launch base rate the list prints. The same money against a carpet area of 1,482.3 sq.ft, the figure a 30 percent loading would imply, reads as roughly ₹22,000 per sq.ft. Same money, same home, two very different numbers to set beside the next project on your list. If you are comparing rates across projects, you have to compare them on the same basis or you are not comparing anything.

Which area does the Agreement for Sale pin?

Carpet area, and the form leaves no room to do otherwise. Uttar Pradesh prescribes a model Agreement for Sale under its 2018 rules, published on the UP-RERA site. Clause 1.2 opens like this:

The break-up table printed under that clause has rows for Block, Apartment No., Type, Floor, Carpet Area and Total price, with the rate expressed per square meter and per square foot. There is no row for super built up area. Earlier in the same form, recital G records that the allottee "has been allotted apartment No. ______ having carpet area of ______ square meters (______ square feet)". So the document that actually transfers the home to you is a carpet area contract, whatever the marketing sheet in your WhatsApp says.

Press reports in January 2024 described a UP-RERA direction to promoters to sell on carpet area basis. We could not open a primary copy of that direction on up-rera.in on 4 September 2026, so we are not stating it as a finding. We do not need it. The model agreement is primary, it is published, and it is unambiguous on its face.

Against that, look at what the ACE Arte price list actually prints. Three sizes, each marked with an asterisk and the words "Tentative Sizes*": 1,927 sq.ft for the 3 BHK, 2,614 sq.ft for the 4 BHK, and 4,370 sq.ft for the 4 BHK + S. A launch base rate of ₹21,995/sq.ft*, a pre-launch discount of ₹5,000/sq.ft, and a pre-launch base rate of ₹16,995/sq.ft*. PLC, GST and other charges are named as extra, with no rupee figure printed against any of them.

What the list does not print is the area basis. It never says carpet, it never says super built up, it never says saleable. We are the channel partner for this project and we are telling you plainly that we cannot answer the question from the document, because the document does not answer it. Anyone who tells you otherwise from the same price list is filling in a blank. The full transcription, row by row with the printed conditions, is on our ACE Arte price list page, and the three configurations sit side by side on the ACE Arte sizes page.

A price list is a marketing document. It is caught by the Act's definition of "advertisement" in Section 2(b), which covers "any notice, circular or other documents or publicity in any form" that invites a person "to make advances or deposits for such purposes", so it is not a document without consequence. But it is not the Agreement for Sale, and the area basis is a term of the Agreement.

What has to be pinned down in writing before you sign?

One request, sent in text so it carries a timestamp, answered in text rather than on a call. It is a single question and a small piece of writing, and that small piece of writing is doing more work than its length suggests. Three things have to hold in it, and the awkward part is that all three fail silently.

It has to name the statutory definition, not just the words. Ask whether a size is the carpet area and you can be answered honestly using a house meaning of carpet area, because the phrase is in everyday commercial use as well as in Section 2(k). Both sides then walk away certain they agreed, meaning two different floor areas. Unless the definition is identified by its section, the answer has room to drift.

It has to name the binding document. A confirmation about the price list confirms something about a marketing sheet. The figure that gets enforced is the one entered in clause 1.2 of the Agreement for Sale, and a question that does not point at that clause can be answered accurately without anyone committing to what will be written there.

It has to ask for the balcony and terrace areas separately. Section 4(2)(h) already contemplates three separate figures at registration: the carpet area, the exclusive balcony or verandah area, and the exclusive open terrace area. One blended number is less a wrong answer than an incomplete one, and it is incomplete in the direction that makes a home read larger.

Getting this wrong is not a paperwork problem. On these three configurations the distance between a quoted size and a Section 2(k) carpet area runs to hundreds of square feet, and the figure that lands in clause 1.2 is the base against which clause 1.7 reconciles your price once the occupancy certificate is granted. A loosely framed question earns a reply that reads like a commitment and is not one, and a reply that reads like a commitment is the one people stop asking after. So this is drafting rather than templating. The wording that binds names your configuration, your tower and the clause the figure will land in, and a version missing one of those elements looks identical on the screen to one that is complete.

Two follow-ups belong in the same message. Ask for the rate per square foot of carpet area, because the Total Price divided by the clause 1.2 carpet area is the only per-square-foot number that compares honestly against another project with different marketing conventions. And keep the reply. It is the document you will want on the day the two figures have to be reconciled.

Can the carpet area change after the building is finished?

Yes, and the model agreement anticipates it. Clause 1.7 requires the promoter to confirm the final carpet area after construction is complete and the completion or occupancy certificate has been granted, by furnishing details of the changes, if any. The total price is then recalculated. If the carpet area has reduced, the excess money is refunded to the allottee within forty-five days with annual interest at the rate prescribed in the rules. If it has increased by not more than three percent, the promoter may demand that amount at the next milestone of the payment plan. All adjustments are made at the rate agreed in clause 1.2.

So your price is provisional in a narrow, defined way until the occupancy certificate exists. Two implications. First, a carpet area figure written into clause 1.2 is not a soft number; it is the base for a refund calculation that runs against the promoter if the built home comes in smaller. Second, the three percent tolerance runs one way only. There is no ceiling in that clause on how far a reduction can go, because a reduction pays you back with interest rather than costing you.

The model form sets that interest at the marginal cost of lending rate on a State Bank of India home loan plus one percent, unless the rules provide otherwise, and it applies the same rate to a buyer who is late on an instalment. That symmetry is worth knowing before you sign anything, and it connects directly to how the instalments are triggered, which we take apart in what slab casting means in ACE Arte's 20X5 payment plan.

Written 4 September 2026 by our desk, an authorised channel partner. We are not ACE Infracity Developers and this is not their official website. You book in your own name with the developer and every payment goes to the developer's designated account. Statutory text on this page is quoted from the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 and the model Agreement for Sale under the UP Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (Agreement for Sale/Lease) Rules, 2018, both as published at up-rera.in and read on 4 September 2026. It is a reading aid, not legal advice.