How Much Is an Acre of Land Worth in 2026? Farmland, Paddock and Woodland Values

Most published land values are averages for farmland bought and sold as farmland. Surveyors call this the land's current use value, or existing use value: what it is worth for growing crops, grazing animals or keeping horses, with no expectation that anything will ever be built on it. Every figure on this page is a current use figure.

Two things stand out. The national figures for ordinary farmland sit in a fairly narrow band, roughly £8,500 to £12,000 an acre depending on who measures it and how. And the smaller the parcel, the higher the price per acre tends to be, which is why a paddock and a 200 acre arable block can sell for very different sums per acre in the same parish. The rest of this guide explains each line of the table, why the sources differ, and what moves a particular field up or down.

Arable land in England averaged £10,600 an acre and pasture £8,700 over the first nine months of 2026, on Strutt and Parker's farmland database. Farmers Weekly, reporting the figures on 12 October 2026, noted that both were £200 an acre higher than the same period in 2025. Arable land, which grows crops, is normally worth more than pasture, which is grass for grazing, because it earns more and can be used for more things.

Knight Frank's index tells a softer story. Its Farmland Index for the second quarter of 2026 put the average value of bare land across England and Wales at £8,497 an acre, down 1.5% on the quarter and 4.1% on the year. That was the seventh quarter in a row in which the index fell, from a peak of £9,351 an acre in the third quarter of 2024. Over five years the index was still up 20.3%.

Savills, in its Market in Minutes report for summer 2026, found that GB farmland values had decreased by 1.4% on average in the first half of 2026, with prime and grade 3 arable down in the South East, South West and East of England and declines for poorer pasture in Wales, the South East, the South West and the West Midlands. So one database shows a small rise and two other measures show a small fall. Read together, they put ordinary farmland in England at somewhere around £8,500 to £10,600 an acre in 2026, with the movement within the year a few per cent either way.

Knight Frank's head of farm and estate sales, Will Matthews, gave the honest caveat in the same report: because so few sales were taking place, he said, it was impossible to say what an acre of land is worth. Low volumes make every average less certain, and the next section explains why the measures do not agree.

• Knight Frank's index is a valuers' opinion. The report says the index is based on the opinions of the firm's valuers and negotiators, taking into account recent sales evidence, local market knowledge and sentiment. It tracks the value of bare agricultural land, not the price of any particular sale.
• Strutt and Parker's figures come from the firm's farmland database. They split arable from pasture, cover England only and, as the firm explained when publishing its figures for 2025, are based on sold prices for farms or blocks of land bigger than 100 acres. For the whole of 2025 they put arable at £11,000 an acre, 2% down on 2024, and pasture at £8,600, down 4%. Paddocks and small lots are outside that pool altogether.
• The RICS and Royal Agricultural University report uses reported transactions. Land agents across the country send in details of sales, and the report for the second half of 2025, published by RICS in May 2026, analysed 433 of them, 416 in England. Every kind of sale is included, from bare land to large estates, so small, expensive parcels and sales that include houses can lift the average.

The RICS report shows how much the mix matters. Its average across all reported transactions in the second half of 2025 was £13,848 an acre. Its weighted average, which leaves out sales where a house or other residential value made up more than half the price or where something else, such as development value or a secure tenancy, distorted it, and then adjusts for region, was £11,206 an acre. The same set of sales gives two figures £2,642 apart, purely because of what is counted. The report itself warns that some categories have few transactions and are vulnerable to individual sales.

Why Listing Websites Show Higher Prices

A listing site averages asking prices across every kind of land on its pages, and that is a different thing from what farmland sells for. Three effects push those averages up.

1. They are asking prices, not sale prices. A guide price is the seller's hope. In the RICS directory of 2025 sales, lots sold above, close to and below their guides, some by more than 20% either way.
2. They mix lot sizes. A site that lists ten paddocks of two acres and one farm of 300 acres will show a much higher average per acre if it averages the listings rather than the acres, because each small lot carries a high price per acre.
3. They mix kinds of land. Equestrian property, amenity land, lakes and woodland all sit in the same pool as farmland. Where a listing includes a house, stables or other buildings, its price per acre is not a land value at all.

The figures drawn from sales or from valuers' indices are the ones to rely on for farmland. A listing average is useful only for seeing what kinds of land are on the market and what sellers are hoping for.

One further effect catches sellers out. Some land, usually near a town or village, sells for more than its farming value because a buyer hopes it may one day get planning permission. That extra is called hope value; it belongs to the particular site and is explained in our guide to how the price for your land is worked out. It is one more reason a single sale is a poor guide to the value of farmland generally.

Yes, and often by more than the national averages suggest, but nobody publishes a reliable average for every county. Knight Frank's Will Matthews put the extremes plainly in the second quarter of 2026: the right block of land in the north Cotswolds could still make £20,000 an acre, while in other areas a seller might be pleased to get £10,000. Savills' summer 2026 report found the falls in the first half of 2026 concentrated in particular regions and grades of land rather than spread evenly.

The best public evidence by county is the RICS directory of individual sales. It lists each sale with its county, acreage, the guide price and a code showing whether the sale went above or below the guide. A sample of the bare land sales in England contracted in 2025 shows the spread.

Read across the rows and the pattern is clear. Large arable blocks in the South East and South West sat above the national averages, larger pasture in Cumbria below them, and the small grass parcels in Cumbria and Devon were guided higher per acre than either the larger Cumbrian pasture or the Norfolk arable block. The second Cumbrian parcel went more than 20% over its guide, so it sold for over £12,000 an acre, against about £7,350 for the larger block in the same county the same month.

If you want a value for land in your own county, the people with the evidence are the rural agents who sell land there, because most of what they know comes from sales that never appear in a published report. Our county pages do something different: each one sets out the council's housing position, which matters if a field has a planning future. You can find them on our areas page.

Per acre, usually yes. Bare land means fields with no buildings or house. The RICS and Royal Agricultural University report breaks down the sales reported for the second half of 2025 by what was included: in England, bare land averaged £12,158 an acre, land with buildings £14,637 an acre, and land sold with a house as well as buildings £16,278 an acre. The house, yard and buildings add value of their own, so the figure per acre rises even though the fields themselves are no better.

This matters when you compare your land with a sale you have heard about. A farm sold with a farmhouse and a range of buildings tells you little about what a bare field next door is worth, because a large part of the price is the house. The same is true in reverse. Buildings in poor repair can count against a sale, and Savills' commentary on Scotland described buyers as much more forensic on anything secondary or requiring significant capital expenditure.

Equipped farms and bare blocks also attract different buyers. The same Savills commentary on Scotland found that well equipped, sensibly priced farms were still attracting interest in the first half of 2026. Strutt and Parker's figures, reported in October 2026, showed that farmers had accounted for 62% of purchases in 2026, their highest share in more than a decade, and a farmer expanding next door is buying acres to farm, not a house. Savills' summer 2026 report carried the headline "Challenging times, but opportunities taken by those expanding".

Moore Allen and Innocent, a firm of agents contributing to the RICS report for the second half of 2025, said that equestrian buyers and smallholders still had an appetite for small parcels of land with or without buildings, from nothing up to 5 acres, and were prepared to pay £20,000 to £40,000 an acre. Another contributor, HJ Burt, said the market for smaller parcels remained more predictable and generally strong.

Auction results from Cheffins in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, published in January 2026, check that view against real sales and show how wide the range can be. All five were sold at the firm's property auctions in 2025.

The table shows the pattern as clearly as any index could. The two parcels of around two acres sold for well over £50,000 an acre, and the dearer of them came with a barn, a shelter and a pond, so part of what the buyer paid for was the buildings. The grassland lots of 7.77 and 9.37 acres made £13,000 to £19,000 an acre. The 17 acre arable parcel, the one most like ordinary farmland, sold for about £7,200 an acre, a little below the national averages for farmland.

Why Small Lots Sell at a Premium

• More buyers can afford them. A two acre paddock at £100,000 is within reach of many households; a 200 acre farm is not. More bidders means a higher price per acre.
• Many of the buyers are not farmers. Cheffins lists other farmers, landowners, lifestyle buyers and amenity buyers. A horse owner pays for somewhere to keep a horse near home, not for what the grass would earn, and Cheffins said such buyers often buy with their heart rather than their head.
• The costs of buying are much the same. Legal fees, searches and survey costs do not shrink in proportion to the acreage, so a buyer of a small lot is paying for convenience as much as land.
• Features count for more. A road frontage, a field shelter, a water supply or a secure boundary adds proportionately more to two acres than to two hundred.

Location matters too. A paddock near a village with good roads attracts more buyers than the same field down a long track, and some of those buyers may be hoping for a planning future that has nothing to do with grazing. Our page on paddocks and small sites explains how small fields are treated by the planning rules.

Usually less than farmland. The UK Forestry Market Report 2025, published by Goldcrest Land and Forestry Group and Tilhill Forestry and reported by Farmers Weekly in November 2025, put listing values for mixed woodland in England at £16,200 a hectare, about £6,560 an acre, up 3% on the year. Land with potential for commercial forestry planting was attracting about £15,000 a hectare, about £6,070 an acre, in England and Wales.

Sales in the RICS directory for 2025 fit that range. A 66.45 acre wood at Litcham Warren in Norfolk had a guide of £300,000, about £4,515 an acre, and sold 10% to 20% above it, so for roughly £4,970 to £5,420 an acre. The 71.26 acre Oldridge Wood near Canterbury in Kent, classed as amenity land, had a guide of £350,000, about £4,910 an acre, and sold 10% to 20% below it, roughly £3,930 to £4,420 an acre.

Woodland earns little from farming, so its value rests on other things: timber, privacy, conservation and, for some buyers, the chance to plant more trees. Lifestyle buyers compete for some of it too. Savills noted lifestyle buyers in Wales seeking a mix of land types, including woodland, lakes and rivers, which is the same pull that lifts the price of paddocks.

Amenity land is the name agents give to land bought mainly for enjoyment rather than income: a wood, a meadow, a lake or a riverside field. None of the national measures in this guide records it separately, because each piece is different, and its value per acre depends heavily on size, access and how close it is to where buyers live.

• Soil grade. Farmland in England is graded under the Agricultural Land Classification from grade 1, land with no or very minor limitations, to grade 5, land with very severe limitations that restrict it to permanent pasture or rough grazing. Grade 3 is split into 3a and 3b, and grades 1 to 3a are known as the best and most versatile land. Better grades grow a wider range of crops, which is what a farming buyer pays for. The government's guidance points to the post-1988 survey results on the Magic map, and warns that its broad predictive maps are not accurate enough for individual fields.
• Size of the lot. Small lots sell for more per acre, as the paddock table above shows, because far more buyers can afford them.
• Access and shape. A field with a good gateway onto a road and a sensible shape is easier to farm and to sell. Land reached only over a long track, or with a public footpath across it, can put some buyers off.
• Neighbours. The strongest bidder for bare land is often the farmer next door. With farmers making 62% of purchases in 2026, according to Strutt and Parker, a field surrounded by expanding farms is in a better position than an isolated one.
• Buildings, water and fences. Usable buildings, mains water and stock-proof fences add value; derelict buildings can cost a buyer money.
• Buyer type and money looking for land. Savills described buyers with proceeds from development sales as an important source of demand, and one agent in the RICS report noted significant local spikes in value where such rollover money competes. A local spike can lift a parish well above the averages.
• Other uses for the land. Savills set its summer 2026 report against the land use framework for England, which recognises that land matters for alternative uses such as development, infrastructure and energy as well as for food. Where land has another realistic use, farming value is no longer the only thing a buyer weighs.

Several of these act against each other. A large block of grade 2 arable with road access is the textbook valuable farm, but if no neighbour is buying that year it may make less than a smaller, poorer field that two horse owners both want. Valuers start from the averages and then adjust for each of these features in turn.

Three things above all: the inheritance tax changes of April 2026, a shortage of land for sale, and pressure on farm incomes and the schemes that support them. Each has pushed buyers towards caution, while the small amount of land for sale has left them little to choose from.

The April 2026 Inheritance Tax Changes

The changes have made the market more cautious, and the higher allowance may have kept some land off the market. From 6 April 2026, HMRC's published measure gives a combined £2.5 million allowance for 100% agricultural and business property relief, with relief at 50% on qualifying value above it. The government announced on 23 December 2025 that the allowance would be £2.5 million rather than the £1 million first proposed, any unused allowance can pass to a surviving spouse or civil partner, so that, as the Treasury and Defra explained, a couple can pass on up to £5 million of agricultural or business assets between them on top of allowances such as the nil-rate band, and the inheritance tax on qualifying property can be paid in ten equal yearly instalments free of interest.

Knight Frank wrote in its second quarter 2026 report that the inheritance tax changes for family businesses continued to cast a shadow over the industry. Moore Allen and Innocent, in the RICS report, believed prices for mainstream farmland had dropped by as much as 10% compared with 2024, citing the proposed changes among the reasons.

The higher allowance pulled the other way. Luscombe Maye, another contributor to the RICS report, said that after the threshold rose, some owners no longer needed to sell land or the farm to pay a future inheritance tax bill, which could mean fewer farms coming to market and firmer prices. Strutt and Parker's figures, reported on 12 October 2026, linked a slowdown in sales to speculation ahead of the Budget of 28 October 2026 that the reforms might be reversed.

Supply, Farm Costs and Government Schemes

Very little land has been offered for sale, so even careful buyers have had little to choose from.

• Less land on the market. Knight Frank, drawing on the Farmers Weekly land tracker, reported that the amount of land advertised for sale in the first half of 2026 fell by almost 25% compared with 2025. Savills put GB supply down 12%, or 11,500 acres, on the same period in 2025, and Strutt and Parker found the area publicly marketed in the third quarter of 2026 was 16% below the five-year average.
• Farm costs. Knight Frank pointed to fuel and fertiliser costs, sent rocketing by the Iranian conflict, as a threat to farm profits, and farm profits are what a farming buyer can afford to pay for land.
• Environmental schemes. Knight Frank noted that government funding for the environmental schemes that replaced EU subsidies remained uncertain beyond the short term, and Strutt and Parker cited difficulties accessing the Sustainable Farming Incentive as weighing on arable sentiment. Income from schemes is part of what land earns, so uncertainty about it holds back what buyers will pay.
• Sentiment. Will Matthews of Knight Frank summed up the second quarter of 2026 by saying the biggest issue was not affordability but sentiment. Buyers were in no hurry, and motivated sellers were few and far between.

For a landowner, the practical effect is that a sale of farmland in 2026 has often taken longer than it would have a few years earlier, while good land in a strong location has still found buyers. Knight Frank cited the sale of Higher Farm in Dorset, almost 1,000 acres of arable land overlooking Chesil Beach, as an example of strong interest in quality property, while noting that deals were taking longer to complete.

One hectare is 2.471 acres, and one acre is 0.4047 of a hectare. To turn a value per hectare into a value per acre, divide by 2.471; to go the other way, multiply by 2.471. Knight Frank prints both for its index: £8,497 an acre and £20,995 a hectare, which is the same figure in two units. A hectare is 10,000 square metres, a square 100 metres by 100 metres.

Reports, maps and government schemes use both units, so convert before you compare. A figure that looks two and a half times as high as another is often simply a value per hectare set beside a value per acre.

There is no figure per acre for land with planning permission that would mean anything for your field, and this guide deliberately gives none. Land with permission for homes is a different market from farmland. Its value belongs to a particular scheme, not to the soil: it depends on how many homes the permission allows, what those homes will sell for, what the scheme must pay for, from roads and drainage to affordable housing and the council's charges, and how much risk and time stood between the field and the permission.

For land without permission, the planning risk is the largest unknown of all. A field may be refused, may need an appeal, or may wait years for the council's plan to change. Two fields of the same size on the same road can have completely different prospects. That is why a value per acre for development land, quoted in a newspaper or on a website, cannot be applied to anyone's field. Our guide to where the money goes when a field becomes homes shows how the costs of a scheme are paid before anything reaches the land, and our land value page sets out the difference between existing use value, hope value and value with planning.

Where a field does have development potential, our approach is simple. We agree a price at the start, written as a figure and set above what the land is worth today in its current use, and we pay for and run all of the planning work at our own cost and risk. If permission is not secured, you keep your land and owe nothing. A free desktop review is the simplest way to find out if your land is in that position.