The dunum: how land is measured, priced, and compared

If you are buying land in Palestine, every conversation will be in dunums. If you grew up abroad, the unit may be unfamiliar, and the arithmetic that follows from it is where a lot of confusion starts.

One dunum is 1,000 square metres. That is the metric dunum, and it is the figure used throughout Palestine, Jordan, and the region today.

• 1 dunum = 1,000 m²
• 1 dunum = 0.1 hectare
• 1 dunum = approximately 0.247 acres
• 10 dunums = 1 hectare
• 1 acre = approximately 4.05 dunums

A dunum is roughly a square of 31.6 metres a side. A standard football pitch is about seven dunums.

There was an older and smaller dunum. Ottoman practice defined it not metrically but as 1,600 square pik, which works out at roughly 919 square metres — about eight percent less than the dunum in use now. The metric dunum of 1,000 m² was standardised in 1928, and it is the only figure anyone quotes today, in Palestine and Jordan alike.

The older measure still surfaces occasionally, and always in the same places: old deeds, and the paperwork of land that has passed down a family without being re-surveyed. Where a document is old enough that its areas may be in the older unit, the gap on ten dunums is close to a whole dunum. The answer is not to convert the old figure. It is to check the area against a current survey and the registration record, and to treat the old document as history rather than measurement.

Buildings are priced as a total: an apartment at 180,000 dinars means the apartment costs 180,000. Land is usually priced per dunum: a parcel quoted at 40,000 dinars per dunum, across four dunums, totals 160,000.

This distinction sounds trivial and causes real errors. A parcel advertised at 40,000 and an apartment advertised at 180,000 are not comparable numbers — one is a rate and the other is a total. When you are moving between listings quickly, particularly across currencies, it is easy to compare the wrong pair of figures.

On this site, the unit is always stated next to the price, and our search will not sort a per-dunum price against a total price, because the ordering would be meaningless. If you have wondered why the price sort sometimes asks you to narrow your search first, this is why.

Price per dunum lets you compare parcels of different sizes, which is genuinely valuable. A two-dunum plot at 50,000 per dunum and a six-dunum plot at 38,000 per dunum tell you something immediately.

But it normalises for size only. It does not normalise for:

• Location — obviously, and by a large factor.
• Access. Whether a road reaches the parcel, and whether that road is passable in winter, can matter more than the price per dunum. Land without access is worth substantially less than the same land with it.
• Registration status. Whether the parcel is formally registered, and what documentation exists, affects both value and how straightforward a sale will be — ask us about any parcel's documentation before you offer.
• Buildability. Slope, soil, and whether building is permitted at all. A flat, registered, road-accessible dunum and a steep dunum with no permitted construction are not the same commodity at any price.
• Shape and frontage. A long narrow strip and a compact square of identical area do not carry identical value.

So price per dunum is the right first filter and the wrong last word. It tells you which parcels are worth looking at, not which one to buy.

You will notice our land listings show a band — "2 – 5 dunums" — rather than an exact figure.

Exact area is one of the strongest identifying facts about a parcel. Combined with a locality and an approximate price, it is often enough for someone with local knowledge to work out precisely which plot is being described, which would let a buyer approach the owner directly and bypass us. The band gives you what you need to judge whether a parcel is the right size, without giving away which parcel it is.

The exact area is released, along with the exact location, once you have registered your interest and we have gone through our fee terms with you. We have explained the reasoning behind this in full in our guide on why we don't publish exact locations.

• The quoted area and the registered area may differ. What a seller describes and what the documentation records are not always the same, and the difference is occasionally significant. Confirm against the paperwork rather than the conversation.
• Ask whether the figure is net or gross, particularly where a parcel has been divided or where part of the area falls under a road or right of way.

Both of these are part of the checks we carry out before a property is published, and both are worth confirming independently.

This article is general information and is not legal advice. Area, boundaries, and what a document actually records are specific to the parcel in front of you. Speak to a qualified lawyer about your own situation.