Agricultural Land Price per Hectare in the Philippines

The agricultural land price per hectare in the Philippines runs from about ₱1 million (about $15,900 / €14,200) for a titled farm lot in Palawan to ₱25 million (about $398,000 / €356,000) for raw land on the edge of a Batangas town, in the lots listed on BalayHub this October. That spread is the first thing to understand: a hectare is 10,000 square meters, so a price of ₱180 (about $2.9 / €2.6) per square meter in a Nueva Ecija rice field is ₱1.8 million (about $28,700 / €25,600) per hectare, and the same hectare two hours from Metro Manila costs ten times more. The second thing to understand is that agricultural land is sold under a law of its own. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law caps how much a buyer may hold, voids sales that breach it, and locks awarded land for ten years. This guide gives the prices from our sample and the rules that decide whether the sale can be registered at all.

What farm land lists for, per hectare

Our listing price sample holds 77 lots for sale, and eight of them are farm or raw land of a hectare or more, or priced the way farm land is. Per hectare, from the cheapest:

The pattern is distance and water. Rice land in Nueva Ecija, the country's rice bowl, asks ₱1.8 million to ₱3.5 million (about $28,700 to $55,800 / €25,600 to €49,800) per hectare, with the irrigated lot at the top. Palawan farm land is the cheapest in the sample, and it is also the farthest from a large market. Land within two hours of Metro Manila is priced for what it may become rather than what it grows, which is why Tanay sits at ₱8 million (about $127,000 / €114,000) per hectare and Nasugbu and Tanauan at ₱18 million to ₱25 million (about $287,000 to $398,000 / €256,000 to €356,000). Our land price guide has the province by province medians, and the price per square meter tool updates as lots are added.

These are asking prices on a small sample, not appraisals. Farm land negotiates hard, and a lot that has sat for a year often closes well below the figure above.

The five hectare ceiling

Republic Act 6657, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, sets the ceiling. Section 6 lets a landowner retain no more than five hectares of agricultural land, and Section 70 applies the same limit to buyers: a sale of agricultural land is valid only if the buyer's total holdings, including the land being bought, stay within the ceiling, and sales that contravene the Act "shall be null and void."

The ceiling is enforced at the Registry of Deeds. Under the Department of Agrarian Reform's Administrative Order 1 of 1989, the buyer files a sworn statement that he or she and the spouse hold no more than five hectares of agricultural land counting the lot being acquired, with a copy served on the Barangay Agrarian Reform Committee, and the Register of Deeds will not register the transfer without it. Someone who already owns four hectares cannot buy two more; the Registry would refuse the deed.

Practitioners add that most Registries now ask for a DAR clearance before registering a sale, donation or partition of land classified as agricultural on the title or tax declaration, whether or not anyone farms it. The application goes to the DAR municipal or provincial office with the deed, a certified copy of the title, the current tax declaration, the affidavits of landholdings of buyer and seller, and a barangay certification stating whether tenants or farmworkers are on the land. Build the clearance into the timeline before you pay the balance.

Awarded land, tenants and the other locks

Land distributed to farmer beneficiaries under agrarian reform carries a Certificate of Land Ownership Award or an Emancipation Patent, and Section 27 of the law bars its sale for ten years from the award except to heirs, to the government or the Land Bank, or to other qualified beneficiaries. Republic Act 11953 of 2023 condoned the beneficiaries' unpaid land amortizations and lifted the Land Bank's mortgage liens, and the condonation is annotated on each title, but the Act states that it does not remove the existing limits on transfer, ownership and agricultural use. A CLOA with a recent date is a lot you cannot buy, however willing the holder.

Tenanted land is the second lock. A tenant on the land you are buying keeps the tenancy, and under the agrarian laws holds rights of pre-emption and redemption that can unwind a sale made without proper notice. The barangay certification in the DAR clearance file exists to flush this out; ask for it before the deposit, not after.

Conversion is the third. Section 65 allows the DAR to authorize conversion of agricultural land to other uses only where the land is no longer economically feasible for agriculture or the area has urbanized, and for awarded land only after five years from the award, and the law lists converting land to dodge agrarian reform among the prohibited acts, punishable under Section 74 by one month to three years in prison, a fine of ₱1,000 to ₱15,000 (about $16 to $239 / €14 to €214), or both. A buyer who wants a subdivision, a resort or a warehouse on farm land should price in a conversion process that may not be granted, and should treat an agent's promise that the land "can easily be converted" as a reason to walk.

Foreign buyers face the ordinary rule: land, farm or otherwise, cannot be owned by a foreign individual, as our guide on foreign ownership explains.

Checks before you pay

Start with the paper, following our guide to buying land: a certified copy of the title, read for the CLOA or EP notation and for annotations, as set out in our guide on how to verify a land title. Many farm lots are held only under a tax declaration, which proves possession and not ownership; our comparison of tax declaration vs land title explains what that buys you and what it does not.

Then the classification. The tax declaration says whether the assessor treats the land as agricultural, residential or commercial, and that word decides the real property tax, the conversion question and whether the DAR is involved at all. Then access: an interior farm lot without a registered passage is worth less than the asking price suggests, for the reasons in our guide to the right of way. Then water, by asking the National Irrigation Administration office whether the lot is in an irrigated area, which raises the value and narrows the conversion options at the same time.

Finally the count. Add the lot to everything agricultural that you and your spouse already own anywhere in the country; if the sum passes five hectares, the sale cannot be registered in your name, and structuring it through relatives or a corporation is among the acts the law names as circumvention. Current land for sale across the provinces is listed by city.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Prices are asking figures from BalayHub's listing price sample as of October 2026; the agrarian rules summarized here have exceptions and later amendments, so confirm your case with the DAR provincial office and a lawyer before signing.

Dollar and euro figures are approximate conversions at ₱62.8 per US dollar and ₱70.2 per euro (ECB reference rates, 2026-10-13).