Originally Posted by
James Tan
If your car park is covered, then you will need to add to the 80,000 built up to arrive at the total GFA. But important thing is the design.
For example, in a 3-storey condo, the first 2 levels belonged to one unit (a maisonette) with an apartment in the third level. The car park is covered by the floor of the third level, but because of its high ceiling, i.e. no second level above the car park, the GFA computations is now taken to be twice that of the car park (multiplied by two levels although the car takes only one level).
That estate has plot size of about 75,000 sq.ft. and with a similar plot ratio of 1.4, the max GFA is about 105,000 sq.ft., but the current built-up, excluding the car park is less than 80,000 sq.ft., however, the DC baseline is revised to 1.3 when the covered car parks are included.
Swimming pools, playground, open car park lots, sports area (monkey bars, foot massage areas, etc.,) are not included in the GFA as long as they are open (no ceiling). For this reason, you will find some condos with a covered car park structure, but instead of a full ceiling, wooden bars (called pergolas) are used as the roof such that rain falls through (so it is open). For shade, the condo plants creepers across the wooden timber, but rainwater still falls through.
Open balconies, which were originally included because the upper level's floor is the ceiling, has since been excluded in the late 1990s when the planning authorities wanted to encourage the garden city concept. In fact, in 2000 or 2001, a 10% bonus has been given to encourage architects to design more open balconies.
For this reason, the net saleable space is now taken as 100% of the GFA instead of the previous 85% to 90% because of the bonus. Lift shafts, lift landings, staircases, corridors, and such spaces are included in the GFA although not liveable space. So are the swimming pool toilets, PES (private enclosed spaces), office, gym, etc.
The best way to find out is to apply for the development baseline which cost about $1,500 - $2,000 to the URA, BUT this is assumed you have a council member who is an architect and willing to do the computations for free, otherwise architects charge a fee between $6,000 and $10,000, making the total application fee in the region of between $8,000 and $12,000.