Why package pricing does not work here
- There is no standard flat. A package rate is built on a repeated layout and a known cutting list. BKC's residential stock is a small number of towers with large, varied apartments, so every job is measured and drawn from scratch.
- Access cost varies by apartment. A low-floor unit with a straightforward service route and a high-floor one requiring night slots for anything heavy are different projects at the same finish level. Averaging them into one rate is how a package quote becomes a variation.
- The brief splits three ways. An owner-occupier, a corporate lessee and a landlord preparing a unit for let want genuinely different buildings, and a single package rate serves none of them well.
- Services are not yours to standardise. Central plant, a fixed cooling allocation and a managed BMS mean the mechanical scope depends on the building's answer, which arrives after the survey, not before.
Worked example: 2,400 sq ft apartment, corporate let
| Item | ₹ lakh | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Shell preparation, partitions and MEP | 11.4 | Demountable partitions; services surface-routed behind joinery |
| Joinery throughout | 43.9 | Mechanically fixed, not bonded — designed to come out at lease end |
| Kitchen, 16 running feet at ₹58,750 | 9.4 | Induction; extract sized to the shaft's rated capacity |
| Ceiling, lighting and controls | 11.9 | Access panels to every damper and valve |
| Flooring | 8.4 | Floating build-up, no bonding to the slab |
| Painting and wall finishes | 4.4 | Neutral palette; the lease requires a repaint at exit anyway |
| Three bathrooms refitted | 6.0 | Fittings and glass; developer waterproofing retained |
| Access, passes, lift bookings and protection | 2.1 | Shown as its own line because it is real and it varies |
| Total, ex-GST | 97.5 | ₹4,063 per sq ft on 2,400 sq ft carpet |
Add 18% GST. Reinstatement of this fit-out, built demountably from the start, was quoted at ₹4.8 lakh against an estimated ₹16–₹19 lakh for a conventionally built equivalent.
Apartment fit-out priced honestly, line by line
Three briefs, three different buildings
| Brief | ₹ per sq ft | Build method | Programme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner-occupier | ₹4,140 – 5,230 | Conventional; built to stay | 20 – 28 weeks |
| Corporate lessee on a 3–5 year term | ₹3,530 – 4,380 | Demountable; designed to be removed | 10 – 14 weeks |
| Landlord preparing a unit to let | ₹3,280 – 3,770 | Durable and neutral; five-year replacement cycle | 8 – 12 weeks |
Ex-GST. Both ranges sit on apartments we have fitted out and billed in these towers, at October 2026 money. The corporate lessee rate looks lower than the owner-occupier rate and is not cheaper overall, because the reinstatement liability is a real future cost that we quote alongside it.
What we do quote fixed
Not offering a package rate does not mean not offering a fixed price. Once we have surveyed the apartment, confirmed the building's cooling allocation and the extract shaft capacity, established the floor's access regime and frozen the material set, the quotation is a fixed line-item BOQ with a completion date. That usually takes ten to fourteen days from the first visit. What we will not do is quote a rate per square foot from a floor plan and an email, because in these towers the two numbers that matter most — the cooling allocation and the access regime — are not on the plan.
The reinstatement quotation is issued at the same time, not at the end of the lease. On a corporate let that number belongs in the business case from the start, and an owner who sees ₹4.8 lakh against ₹16 to ₹19 lakh makes a different decision about how the fit-out is built.
The survey itself is longer here than elsewhere. As well as measuring, we take the building's fit-out manual, the lease where there is one, the cooling allocation, the extract shaft rating, the service lift car dimensions and the security vetting lead time. Six documents, and between them they determine more of the quotation than the floor plan does. Collecting them takes a morning and it is why our BKC quotations are fixed rather than indicative. A contractor who quotes a BKC apartment without the fit-out manual in hand is guessing at roughly a fifth of the cost, and the guess is almost always low, because the items being missed — night slots, escorted movement, nominated vendors and security vetting — only ever add. We would rather spend the morning and be right. The one thing we cannot fix at that stage is a lease already signed without the fit-out manual read, which is how most BKC apartment budgets go wrong.
For the district see interior designers in BKC; for the design service see residential interior designers in BKC and luxury interior designers in BKC. Package structure elsewhere in the city is on flat interior designers in Mumbai.
Apartment fit-out by Greenbox Design Studio in BKC.
Frequently asked questions
Why will you not quote a BHK package for BKC?+
Because a package rate is built on a repeated layout and a predictable access cost, and BKC has neither. A few hundred large apartments across a handful of towers, varied briefs, and an access regime that differs between a low floor and a high one. A single rate would either overcharge the easy jobs or lose money on the difficult ones, and in practice it turns into variations.
What does a corporate-let fit-out cost here?+
₹3,530–₹4,380 per sq ft carpet, built demountably, in ten to fourteen weeks. Our 2,400 sq ft example was ₹97.5 lakh at ₹4,063 per sq ft. The important second number is reinstatement: ₹4.8 lakh, because it was designed to come out, against an estimated ₹16–₹19 lakh had it been chased and bonded conventionally.
Can I fit out a BKC apartment in eight weeks?+
A landlord preparation, yes — a durable neutral refresh with no layout change runs eight to twelve weeks. An owner-occupier fit-out from a shell is twenty to twenty-eight, because the drawing set has to be complete before site work begins and the long-lead items govern. Anyone quoting eight weeks for a full apartment here has not read the building's access rules.
Is the access cost really worth showing separately?+
We think so. On the worked example it was ₹2.1 lakh — passes, booked lift slots, escorted routes and protection — about 2% of the project and entirely dependent on the floor and the tower. Folding it into a per-square-foot rate hides a number that genuinely varies, and clients comparing quotations deserve to see it.