The Intimation of Disapproval (IOD), occupation certificate and building completion certificate will have to mention the carpet area separately for getting a green signal from the municipal body

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) will soon implement a regulation according to which developers are supposed to mention the actual carpet area while approaching the authority for approvals of their project plans.

“Developers are supposed to mention the actual carpet area while getting all the three certificates—the IOD, occupation certificate and building completion certificate,” said Swadhin Kshatriya, commissioner, MCGM.

The authority will also scrutinise the actual sale agreements of the buyers (which have to mention the actual carpet area and super built-up area separately) before issuing occupation certificates to developers.

“The developers will only get the occupation certificate after the sale agreements are verified. The sale agreement has to mention the carpet area and super built-up area separately. The State government will pass the notification within one month on the same,” added Mr Kshatriya.

The Maharashtra Housing Department is also actively participating to curb the sale of properties mentioning the super built-up area. The department will standardise the definition of carpet area in the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act (MOFA).

“There is no standard definition of carpet area. Every developmental control regulation has a different definition of carpet area. We are going to standardise the definition of carpet area by including it in the MOFA itself,” said Sitaram Kunte, secretary, housing department, government of Maharashtra.

Developers in Mumbai are vigorously using the super-built up area and misleading consumers. In November 2008, the Maharashtra government came up with a housing policy which stated that sales of all properties should be done on carpet-area basis. However, developers still do not sell the properties on carpet-area basis because they get a chance to play with the free Floor Space Index (FSI) by including it as part of the super built-up area and they charge the consumers for the same.

“The ministry should speed up the process of turning the regulation into law and implement it effectively. They have been talking about it since a long time,” said Vinod C Sampat, advocate and proprietor, Vinod C Sampat and Co.
 
The regulation was supposed to become a law within three months of the draft legislation. By March 2009, it should have been a law, but it is not being followed. The authorities are now speeding up the process to make the draft into a law and implement it immediately.

“Developers have drastically raised the super built-up area of new properties. From 50% super built-up area, it has almost reached 100%,” said Pankaj Kapoor, founder, Liases Foras.

However, with the increase in super-built up area, the cost of properties has also doubled over a period of time. Consumers are getting lesser space at a higher cost. For example, if an apartment of 1,000 sq ft carpet area had a saleable area of 1,400 sq ft in Kandivali (a Mumbai suburb) in 2005, at that time, the apartment was priced at Rs2,500 per sq ft. But now, an apartment of 1,000 sq ft is quoted as 2,000 sq ft saleable area. Taking the current cost into consideration, the same apartment is priced at around Rs8,000 per sq ft. The total cost of the apartment has jumped to Rs1.60 crore.

“Today developers are talking of flower beds, which are 12 feet wide—how can you call it a flower bed? Developers are bucking the system openly and blatantly and no one is telling them anything,” said Pranay Vakil, chairman, Knight Frank (India) Pvt Ltd.