Do you use your balcony?

[JR8]

I've never lived in a place that is so overlooked, so closely, and from just about every direction. I have to dress to go to the lounge. Yep she gets to see my big-pants, lucky her To be honest I don't care if it's someone 50m away, but when it's 3m and you hear them laughing, it's a little too 'up close'.


@QRM - I never knew that. It's amazing how misleading the figure is. So it includes external balconies, air-con ledges, and the 'uninhabitable' bomb shelter, the big internal below-window ledges you get in condo bedrooms here, AND walls... That'll explain why 1200ft here, = less than 800ft 'back home'.

p.s. A useful heads-up for new arrivals - expect xFt2 here, to be maybe 30% less actual habitable space, than it represents back home.

[QRM]

@QRM - I never knew that. It's amazing how misleading the figure is. So it includes walls, balconies, air-con ledges, and the 'uninhabitable' bomb shelter... That'll explain why 1200ft here, = less than 800ft 'back home'.

In theory it also includes a lightwell/void as well, different parts of the world have slight variations on the terms, but

Gross floor Area is like taking a string and pulling around the whole outside perimeter wall, ( actually it should be in the center of the perimeter/external wall) so if you so happen to have 1meter thick walls and a huge light well/ service duct etc in the middle of your property then that is all included.

Then there is Gross Internal Areas which like the GFA but measured to the internal face of the walls so voids etc are not included.

What you really want is the NFA (net floor area) that is the actual habitable area. For example if you are fitting a carpet throughout the house the size of the carpet would be the NFA. thats the figure developers here tend to try and avoid giving.

There was a quirk/grey area in the planing laws which is why you see lots of "bay windows"here. In a well known condo I stayed in if I remember the bay window area was almost 400sq feet.

[JR8]

Wow!

Back home, a room without a window cannot be classed as habitable space. Any area with a ceiling height below 6-7? ft is also excluded*. If you see an 800ft place back home, that'll be 800ft of usable internal unrestricted space, each room having 1+ windows.

I wonder if there is cross-over with how service charges are calculated, and who is responsible for what. For example, there is the theory of the 'external wall severed medially'. I.e. the inside half of such a wall is your sole responsibility, whereas the outer half is Common Parts. But, it doesn't mean you'd count half the structural wall towards habitable space.

It smells rather of developers over-selling something, to the extent it's now accepted industry practice.


* So in such cases you see the listing as say '800ft2, plus 50ft restricted height'.