How much is an acre of land worth in 2026

The most reliable national benchmark is the annual survey of the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. In the Land Values 2026 Summary, released July 31, 2026, USDA NASS reports that US farm real estate (all land and buildings on farms) averaged 4,500 USD per acre, up 150 USD or 3.4 percent from 2025.

Cropland averaged 6,020 USD per acre, up 190 USD or 3.3 percent, which is the first time the national cropland average has been above 6,000 USD. Pasture averaged 2,000 USD per acre, up 80 USD or 4.2 percent.

These are survey estimates, not sale prices. NASS builds them from an annual Agricultural Land Values Survey run from April to June, covering roughly 30,000 farm operations, and the US figure excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Producers report what they believe their cropland and pasture are worth, and the regional and national figures are weighted by the amount of cropland and pasture in each state.

At the regional level the spread is already wide. The Corn Belt (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio) averaged 8,540 USD per acre of farm real estate in 2026 and the Pacific region 8,440 USD, while the Northern Plains averaged 3,320 USD and the Mountain region 1,710 USD.

The table below repeats state figures exactly as published in the USDA NASS Land Values 2026 Summary (July 2026). Use it to see the range, not to price a parcel.

USDA notes that the New Mexico figures exclude American Indian Reservation land. Notice how pasture in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee is close to or above cropland. In those states much pasture sits near growing towns, so buyers pay for location and future use, not for grazing.

For a closer starting point, look at county level figures on our land value by county pages, which put USDA county data next to recorded sales for the same county.

USDA values describe land bought mostly for farming and ranching. Most land that changes hands in small pieces is bought for something else: a home site, a hunting tract, a future subdivision, a storage yard, a lot that a builder needs. The buyer pool, and therefore the price per acre, changes completely.

Three effects drive the gap between a farm acre and an acre near town.

• Use. A farm acre is worth roughly what it can earn in crops or grazing, plus some expectation of growth. An acre that can hold a house is worth what a home buyer pays for a lot, which is usually far more per acre.
• Size. A buyer of a one acre lot pays for one usable home site. A buyer of 200 acres pays for the same kind of land in bulk. Per acre, the small tract almost always costs more.
• Infrastructure. Paved road frontage, power at the lot line, public water or sewer, and an approved building permit path can multiply value compared with an acre that needs a new road, a well and a septic system.

That is why you see lots of one acre or less listed near towns at prices that look absurd next to the USDA tables. Both numbers can be right; they measure different markets.

When we compare land sales, the same factors explain most of the difference between one parcel and the next. If you are pricing a specific acre, check each of these before you trust any average.

• Size discount. Price per acre falls as acreage grows. Never apply the per acre price of a 2 acre lot to a 40 acre tract, or the reverse.
• Legal and physical access. A parcel with no recorded easement to a public road can be worth a fraction of its neighbor. Road frontage, road type and driveway cost all matter.
• Utilities. Power at the road, public water, sewer, or a realistic well and septic plan. Missing utilities lower value for any buyer who plans to build.
• Flood zone. Land inside a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (the area with a 1 percent annual chance of flooding) is harder to build on and to finance, and flood insurance adds cost.
• Wetlands. Mapped wetlands (the USFWS National Wetlands Inventory is the usual first screen) can remove usable acreage, and filling them generally needs a federal Clean Water Act permit.
• Zoning and land use rules. Minimum lot sizes, agricultural zoning, subdivision rules and deed restrictions decide what can be built and how many lots you can make.
• Topography and soil. Steep slopes, rock and poor soils raise building cost and limit farming. Good soils carry a premium for cropland buyers.
• Location. Distance to jobs, schools, water and recreation, and the direction a town is growing.
• Timing. Land prices move with rates and local demand, so a sale from three years ago needs a time adjustment before it means anything today.

Our price per acre pages and the price per acre by ZIP code view show how these effects show up in recent sales near you.

An average tells you what land in an area is generally worth. Comparable sales tell you what land like yours actually sold for. LandPricer runs this same process on every parcel.

• Identify the parcel. Find the APN (assessor parcel number), the exact acreage and the boundary. Our APN lookup does this from an address or a pin.
• Pull vacant land sales nearby. Start with the same county and a small radius, then widen it only as far as needed. Keep sales of vacant or agricultural land and drop sales that included a house.
• Keep a similar size band. Sales between about one third and three times your acreage keep the size effect manageable.
• Keep sales recent. The last 24 months is a good default, 36 months when sales are thin, with a time adjustment for older ones.
• Adjust for differences. Correct each comp for size, access, utilities, flood zone and wetland share relative to your parcel.
• Look at the middle, not the extremes. Use a median or weighted median of the adjusted price per acre, and treat the spread between the low and high adjusted values as your range.
• Multiply by acreage. The adjusted price per acre times your acreage gives a value estimate, not a single magic number.

Here is the arithmetic in its simplest form. Say five adjusted comps come out at 7,200, 7,900, 8,300, 8,800 and 11,500 USD per acre. The median is 8,300 USD. For a 1.0 acre lot the estimate is about 8,300 USD, with a realistic range around the middle three values, roughly 7,900 to 8,800 USD. The 11,500 USD sale is the one to investigate before you lean on it, since one outlier can be a lot with road frontage your parcel does not have.

You can see the comps behind any number in our land comps tool, with the source of each sale.

In some states sale prices are not public record. Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming are commonly listed as non-disclosure states, and Missouri is partly non-disclosure depending on the county. There, the comparison method has to lean on sales from neighboring disclosure counties, assessed values and the USDA county figures as a floor for rural land.

In those markets an honest estimate comes with a wider range and a lower confidence label. We explain the method in detail in land comps in non-disclosure states.

USDA averages are good for three things: knowing the floor for rural cropland and pasture in a county, tracking whether a market is rising or falling, and sanity checking an asking price on large agricultural tracts. They are poor at pricing small lots, home sites, land near towns, or any parcel whose best use is something other than farming.

A practical rule is to treat the county cropland or pasture value as the minimum that a large rural tract should bring, then let comparable sales tell you how much more a smaller or better located parcel is worth. If an asking price is below the USDA county value for similar land, find out why: access, title, flood or wetlands problems are the usual answers.

If you want to see how that scales up, read how much 10 acres of land is worth, where the size effect becomes the main story.

According to the USDA NASS Land Values 2026 Summary (July 31, 2026), US farm real estate averaged 4,500 USD per acre, cropland 6,020 USD and pasture 2,000 USD. These are farm survey values and do not describe residential lots or land near towns.

Which state has the most expensive farmland per acre

In the 2026 USDA NASS report Rhode Island has the highest farm real estate value at 23,600 USD per acre, followed by New Jersey at 17,000 USD and Massachusetts at 15,200 USD.

Why is my one acre lot priced far above the USDA average

Small lots near towns sell to home buyers and builders, carry road frontage and utilities, and are priced per usable home site. Price per acre on small tracts is almost always higher than on large farm tracts in the same county.

How accurate is a price per acre estimate

It is as good as the comparable sales behind it. Many recent nearby sales of similar size give a narrow range; few or distant sales give a wide range. That is why every LandPricer estimate shows its range and a High, Medium or Low confidence label.