MOFA vs RERA carpet area: which is bigger?

Most pages on this topic describe MOFA without quoting it. Here is the text. MOFA is the Maharashtra Ownership Flats (Regulation of the Promotion of Construction, Sale, Management and Transfer) Act, 1963, and it mentions carpet area in two places, both in section 3, the list of what a promoter must do.

Two things follow from that, and the second is the one nobody mentions:

• Balconies are in. That part is written into the statute and is not a matter of builder practice.
• Walls are not mentioned at all. MOFA's definitions section (section 2) defines “flat”, “promoter” and “apartment” but not carpet area. How walls were treated was left to agreements and local building rules. The usual practice was to measure inside the walls, which meant internal partitions were not counted, but there was no rule saying so.

That gap is why the internet disagrees with itself. Pages that say MOFA “includes internal walls” and pages that say it “excludes” them are both describing what some builders did. Neither is quoting the law, because there is nothing to quote.

This one is precise. Walls inside the flat count. Walls on its outer edge do not. Balconies and terraces do not, even when they are yours alone. We go through this definition line by line in our RERA carpet vs usable carpet guide.

The two definitions move in opposite directions:

MOFA carpet ≈ RERA carpet − internal walls + balconies

• Internal walls push RERA up. In a typical flat they take 3–5% of the floor plate, less with the thin concrete walls of Mivan construction, more with brick.
• Balconies push MOFA up. In a new Pune layout with a living-room balcony and a kitchen dry balcony, that is often 60–100 sq ft.

In an older flat with one small balcony, the walls win and RERA carpet comes out larger. That is the case most explainers have in mind when they say RERA is “normally” bigger. In a new flat with generous balconies, the balconies win and MOFA carpet comes out larger. The rule-of-thumb gap people quote, 5–10%, is real, but it can point either way.

We hold the developer's floor-plan set for Treasure Troves (MahaRERA P52100052582). It gives RERA carpet and balcony areas for every layout. The one thing it does not give is the area of the internal walls, so we have used a range of 3–5% of RERA carpet and labelled it as an assumption.

On this flat MOFA carpet is the bigger number, by roughly 60–75 sq ft on the 2 RHK. The page that tells you RERA carpet is “always larger” would be wrong here.

Look also at the last row. The figure portals print as “carpet area” for this project, 809 or 1,088, is neither the RERA figure nor a MOFA figure. It is the developer's usable carpet, which adds the balconies back in without taking the internal walls out. One flat can carry three different numbers, and all three get called carpet area.

The flat-with-no-balcony case

Now take a hypothetical 600 sq ft RERA-carpet flat in an older building with no balcony and brick partitions at 4%. Its MOFA-style carpet is about 576 sq ft. RERA is bigger by 24 sq ft. Same formula, opposite answer.

• Resale of a flat bought before May 2017. The agreement will state a MOFA-era figure. A new-project listing next door will state RERA carpet. Do not compare the two per-square-foot rates without converting one of them.
• Redevelopment offers. Your existing entitlement is usually a MOFA figure, and the new flat is drawn in RERA carpet. This is where the difference turns into money. In one case a flat owner described on a legal-advice forum, a 600 sq ft MOFA flat was re-expressed as 635 sq ft RERA carpet plus a 45 sq ft balcony. The developer then worked out the “extra area” the member had to buy from the RERA figure rather than the MOFA figure. That is a gap of about 30 sq ft, charged at market rate, created entirely by switching definitions halfway through the calculation. Our redevelopment guide covers what to get in writing, under the new 2026 rules.
• Bookings that straddled 2017. These are flats booked under MOFA and registered under a RERA agreement. See the ruling below.

In Deepak Pande & Anr v Larsen & Toubro (MahaRERA, order of 17 August 2021), a buyer booked in 2015 under MOFA and signed a RERA agreement in December 2017. He claimed he had been charged for 57.6 sq ft he was not getting, worth about ₹16 lakh. MahaRERA compared the MOFA advertising rule, which counts balconies, with RERA's section 2(k), which does not. It concluded there was “no actual change but simply a variation/difference in the methodology of calculation”. The complaint was dismissed with ₹20,000 costs against the buyer.

The lesson is not that buyers never lose space. They sometimes do, and under RERA a genuine shortfall against the agreed carpet area carries a remedy. The lesson is to convert first and complain second. A MOFA number and a RERA number for the same flat are not supposed to match.

Yes, as of October 2026. In late 2025 the state government examined repealing it at the request of developers' bodies, who argue RERA has made it redundant. Housing federations opposed this, mainly because MOFA's deemed-conveyance route still protects societies formed before RERA. The housing department has since proposed amending MOFA rather than repealing it.

The two laws run side by side. Section 88 of the RERA Act says it applies in addition to other laws, and section 89 says it prevails wherever they are inconsistent. For a new registered project, carpet area is RERA carpet area, with no exceptions. MOFA figures in older agreements are not rewritten after the fact.

1. Is the area in this document RERA carpet, MOFA carpet, usable carpet or built-up? If it is not labelled, ask for it to be labelled.
2. What is the balcony and dry balcony area, separately, in square metres?
3. For a redevelopment offer: is my existing entitlement being measured on the same basis as the new flat? Show me both figures on the same basis.
4. Is any “additional area” I am asked to pay for calculated as RERA carpet minus RERA carpet, and not RERA minus MOFA?

Ask on email or WhatsApp. The answers belong in writing, because a difference of 30 sq ft at Pune rates is the price of a small car.

We are a channel partner, not a promoter, and our income comes from developers. So check anything here that you can check yourself: the statute links are below. On every listing we print RERA carpet area first, label any other figure, and say “not published” where a developer has not disclosed RERA carpet rather than substituting a bigger number. Nothing here is legal advice. For a redevelopment agreement in particular, have an advocate read the area clauses before your society votes.

Sources

• Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act, 1963, ss.2 and 3(2)(m)–(n): Indian Kanoon · Government of Maharashtra
• Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, s.2(k), ss.88–89: MahaRERA
• Deepak Pande & Anr v Larsen & Toubro, MahaRERA, 17 August 2021: SCC Online summary
• MOFA repeal discussion: Hindustan Times, 7 Nov 2025 · Punekar News, 29 Nov 2025