Areas & rents

Carpet, built-up, super built-up: what you actually rent

How each area is measured, how much bigger the quoted area is than the floor you use, and how to compare two offices fairly.

Updated 13 Oct 2026By S N Enterprises4 min read

In short

Carpet area is the floor you can use inside the walls; super built-up adds the walls and a share of lobbies, lifts and corridors.
The gap is the loading. Chennai apartments average about 36%; no figure is published for offices, so ask every time.
Office rents are usually quoted on the bigger, super built-up ("chargeable") area: compare spaces by rent per carpet square foot.

In this guide

Carpet area
Built-up and super built-up
Which one is the rent quoted on?
Questions

Carpet area

RERA defines carpet area as the net usable floor area, excluding the external walls, service shafts, exclusive balconies and open terraces, but including internal partition walls. Its definition of an apartment covers offices, shops, showrooms and godowns, though RERA itself governs sales by developers, not leases.

Built-up and super built-up

Neither has a legal definition. Built-up adds the walls to the carpet area; super built-up adds a share of the building's common areas as well. The difference is the loading:

Loading = (super built-up − carpet) ÷ carpet. An office of 1,350 sq ft super built-up with 1,000 sq ft of carpet has a loading of 35%.

ANAROCK puts the average loading of Chennai apartments at about 36% (2025); RERA doesn't cap it. There's no published figure for Chennai office buildings, and it varies a lot, so ask for the carpet area of every space you see.

Which one is the rent quoted on?

Office rents in Chennai are usually quoted per square foot of chargeable area, which is effectively super built-up: a tech park lease filed in 2019, for example, set the rent per sq ft of "Chargeable Area". Small shops and standalone buildings sometimes quote on carpet or built-up instead; each SNE listing says which.