Buyers need to know the gross floor area of a flat, otherwise they cannot compare the leisure and green facilities of different estates, the Real Estate Developers Association says.
Association secretary general Louis Loong Hon-biu said it objected to the proposed ban on using gross floor area to describe a flat, arguing it should be stated with the internal - or usable - floor area.
But Dr Lawrence Poon Wing-cheung, a spokesman for the Institute of Surveyors, said the association's argument was self-serving, adding buyers did not need to know the gross floor area of a flat because developers used different definitions.
'There is no universal definition of [gross floor area],' Poon said. 'Developers can include whatever items in the common areas they want and flat buyers have no way to verify their size. This will make law enforcement impossible.
'Two sets of figures describing the size of a flat will confuse buyers, especially when they are under stress in a sales office with agents urging them to buy the flat or not.'
Gross floor area usually includes the unit's internal floor area and its share of common areas.
