How Much Does Land Cost in Guatemala? Asking Price per m² and per Acre in 7 Markets, from 2,992 Listings (November 2026)

The median land listing in Guatemala asks about US$163 per square metre (Q1,246), but the market you buy in and, above all, the size of the plot move that number a long way: from US$37/m² in Petén to US$276/m² in Xela, and from US$281/m² for lots under 1,000 m² down to US$43/m² for tracts of 10,000 m² and more — roughly US$173,000 per acre. Every figure on this page is computed from our own index of sale listings as captured on 2 November 2026: 2,992 land listings, of which 2,631 state both an asking price and a lot area, and 2,412 remain once buildings, impossible lot areas and repeats are taken out (see the method below). They are asking prices, not the prices land actually sold for.

TL;DR: Guatemala City area US$176/m² (n=1,509), Antigua area US$186 (n=605), Lake Atitlán US$94 (n=53), Pacific coast US$72 (n=141), Cobán US$86 (n=27), Xela US$276 (n=52), Petén US$37 (n=25). Big tracts ask far less per m² than small lots in all seven markets. Four in five land listings are priced in dollars.

Quick summary

The middle half is the range between the 25th and 75th percentile: half of the listings in each market ask a price per m² inside it. There is no per-acre column here on purpose: multiplying a market’s median per m² by 4,046.86 m² scales small-lot prices up to a size those lots never reach. For a price per acre, use the large-tract figures in the lot-size table below.

In Canadian dollars and pounds (Banguat cross rates for 3 November 2026: US$1 = CA$1.3984 = £0.7792): Guatemala City CA$246 / £137 per m², Antigua area CA$260 / £145, Lake Atitlán CA$131 / £73, Pacific coast CA$100 / £56, Cobán CA$120 / £67, Xela CA$386 / £215, Petén CA$52 / £29.

How these numbers are built

• The data: our listings index reads sale adverts from 33 sites — agencies’ own websites, the portals and classifieds where both agencies and private owners advertise, and the CRM platforms several agencies publish through. On 2 November 2026 it held 14,466 sale listings; 32 of the 33 sites carried at least one land listing. The methodology page lists the source types and how often the index is refreshed.
• Which listings: only those classed as land (lots, terrenos, fincas sold as land). The 15 listings classed as farms and all houses, apartments and commercial premises are left out. Of the 2,992 land listings, 361 give no lot area, which leaves 2,631.
• Clean-up, 2,631 down to 2,412: first, 66 adverts whose title shows that a house, warehouse, office, cabin, parking space or other building is part of the sale are left out, because that price pays for the building as well as the ground. Second, 34 adverts stating a lot area under 50 m² are left out: six show 1 m² on plots asking US$60,000 or more, which points to areas entered in the wrong unit, and one is a cemetery plot. Third, 119 repeats — adverts in the same market whose asking price and lot area match to the nearest dollar and square metre, whether one site lists a lot twice or several sites carry the same advert — are counted once.
• Price per m²: asking price divided by the lot area the advert states. Nothing else is trimmed: very cheap rural tracts and very expensive city plots both stay in, which is why the page reports medians and quartiles rather than averages.
• Asking, not sold: the dataset holds no transaction prices, so every figure is what sellers asked on the capture date.
• Listings, not unique plots: the repeat check only catches copies with an identical price and area, so the same lot advertised at two prices, or with its area in a different unit, can still count twice. Nine of the 2,412 adverts give the area in varas and the index stores that number as if it were square metres, which understates their price per m².
• Currency: quetzal prices are converted to dollars once, at Banguat’s reference rate of Q7.64187 per US$1 (1 November 2026); the Q/m² column converts the dollar median back at the same rate.
• Markets: the same seven markets as our listing pages. Guatemala City means the whole Guatemala department (city zonas and municipios such as Mixco or Santa Catarina Pinula); the Antigua area is Sacatepéquez department.

What sits behind each median

Two markets lean heavily on one source: in Xela, Los Mejores Bienes Inmuebles supplied 37 of the 52 land listings used, and in Cobán one RE/MAX feed supplied 14 of 27. Petén (25) and Cobán (27) are small samples. Read those three medians as a direction, not as a land-price index.

Lot size matters more than the town

Bigger plots ask less per m² — in every one of the seven markets, the median for tracts of 10,000 m² and over sat below the median for lots under 1,000 m².

So the cleanest answer to how much an acre costs: listings of 10,000 m² (about 2.47 acres) and more had a median of US$42.76 per m², or about US$173,056 per acre (CA$241,993 / £134,844). A building lot under 1,000 m² asked a median of US$281.28 per m² — compare it per m², not per acre.

This also explains the ranking in the summary table. Xela tops it because of what is listed there: 35 of its 52 land listings are lots under 300 m² (median 194 m²), half of the 52 titles name a condominium or residential development, and one agency supplied 37 of them. Compared like for like, lots under 1,000 m² asked about the same in Xela (US$304.2), the Antigua area (US$300.8) and Guatemala City (US$312.9). Petén sits at the bottom partly because its median listing is a 20,898 m² tract.

Dollar or quetzal listings

Of the 2,992 land listings, 2,385 (79.7%) ask in US dollars and 607 (20.3%) in quetzales. Quetzal pricing dominates only in Xela (87.3%) and is close to half in Petén (46.4%).

The currency also tracks the type of listing. In the Antigua area, the 442 dollar-priced land listings used had a median of US$223.5 per m² against US$146.9 for the 163 priced in quetzales; on the Pacific coast the gap was US$86.1 (124 listings) against US$25.9 (17). In Guatemala City the two were close: US$179.0 (1,276) and US$164.5 (233).

Units you will meet in adverts

Guatemalan land adverts do not always use square metres. Among the 2,992 land listing titles, 74 mention manzanas, 72 varas, 8 caballerías, 6 hectares, 5 cuerdas and 3 acres. Ask the seller for the surveyed area in square metres and check it against the plot plan before comparing a price with the medians above.

Before you buy land

A median asking price tells you whether an advert is in the normal range; it says nothing about whether the plot can be bought safely.

• Can you hold it? Plots near the ocean, lakes, navigable rivers and borders carry constitutional limits: see foreign-buyer rules.
• Is it titled? Some land is offered on possession rights (derechos posesorios) rather than registered title: read buying land with possession rights before paying anything.
• The process and its costs: the step-by-step buying guide and the closing costs worked out from the fee scales.
• The yearly tax: IUSI is charged on the registered value — rates on property taxes (IUSI) and how to pay on the IUSI guide.
• What a budget buys overall: what US$100K, US$300K and US$500K buy, from the same listings data.
• The live listings: browse land with its lot size in the Guatemala City listings and Antigua listings.

Sources

• livinginguatemala.com sale-listings index as of 2 November 2026 (14,466 listings, 2,992 of them land), method at /real-estate/methodology/; medians, quartiles and counts computed 4 November 2026 with the clean-up steps above (recomputation output: content/research/r45/w6/v6-recompute-2026-11-04.txt in our repository).
• Banco de Guatemala, reference exchange rate web service, https://www.banguat.gob.gt/variables/ws/TipoCambio.asmx — Q7.64187 per US$1 for 1 November 2026 (listing conversion); CAD and GBP rates for 3 November 2026; read 4 November 2026.
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), revised unit conversion factors, https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot/revised-unit-conversion-factors — 1 acre = 4,046.856 422 4 m²; read 4 November 2026.