Carpet Area
When you think about moving to a new office or relocate from a current office, first thing you need to determine is how much space would be just enough for your business needs? And you start thinking in terms of number of work stations, cabins, conference rooms, washrooms, storage etc and try to figure out the exact usable square footage required for your new office. A calculation of the number of workstations, cabins etc give you an approximate usable space required. This approximate area that you occupy inside your office unit where you carry out your daily business is called the carpet area.
Now after determining how much carpet area is required, most people set out their search based on this approximate figure only to later find out that in reality there is something called super area which also needs to be taken into consideration.
Super Area:
Super area is really the carpet area (space you occupy inside the walls of your office unit) plus the shared common spaces like washrooms, stairs, atrium, corridors, perhaps a common fun zone, cafeteria, club etc) basically any support infrastructure which is commonly used up by all building occupiers. Most builders/developers divide this area proportionately among all the different office units in a building and add this “virtual space” to the carpet area/plinth area.
Loading percentage
So basically if builders says that his 5 story building with 25 offices units (each floor with 5 offices) has a total area of 500,000 sq ft, it doesn’t really mean that each office is 20,000 sq ft. The actual area could only be about 14000 sq ft each for unit which means a wastage of 30%. This wastage percentage is known as loading.
In other words, carpet area + loading percentage = Super Area.
So while looking at options from different sources one needs to always keep this loading number in mind so that they get to know the exact rent. More than 90% of the times most brokers and online sources will show you the super area and you can simply calculate your rent based on the per sqft rent and the actual super area. However, what you do not know is the “loading percentage” which could actually determine how much price are you paying on the actual carpet area.
For example, most buildings in Connaught place are identical from the outside and advertisers or brokers may solicit you for two different buildings (Building A and building B) with same size (8000 sq ft) and same rental of Rs 170/sq ft. Now the amenities like elevators, security, air conditioning, power back up etc in both buildings may also be same.
When you calculate the rent for both buildings it would be:
Building A – Rs 170 X 8000 sq ft = 13,60000
Building B – Rs 170 X 8000 sq ft = 13,60000
So far the deal looks equal but it may not be so, if both buildings have a different loading percentage.
Building A with 30% loading percentage = 5600 sq ft
Building B with 45% loading percentage = 4400 sq ft
So clearly as you can see, building B gives you over a 1000 sq ft less than building A and that’s why it is really important to keep this number in the back of your mind while looking at different office space rental options.
