A Primer to Land Measurement Units in India

Buying a plot of land can often lead to a crash course in real estate. Square foot, square yard, square metre, acre, hectare, and the list goes on. However, without a proper understanding of these real estate jargons, you may end up feeling frustrated in your land buying journey.

Wondering why it is important to know these units? Well, depending upon the names of the units, the sizes also vary from State to State.

Standing true to our promise of being your home buying partner, we decided to simplify some of the standard land measurement units used in various parts of the country.

Before we delve further, let’s look at some generally accepted units for land measurements in India.

Square foot (sq.ft.)

You might have definitely heard square foot or square feet as it is one of the most commonly used units in real estate terminology. In simple words, it is defined as the area of a square with sides of 1 foot.

Square metre (sq.mt.)

Next, we have square metre, another common land measuring unit in India. One square metre is made of 10.76 square feet.

Square yard

One square yard is made of 0.8361 square meters or 9 square feet.

Acre

Based upon the International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959, an acre is defined as precisely 4,046.85 square metres. In the Middle Ages, an acre was defined as the area of land that could be ploughed in a day by a yoke of oxen. Interesting, isn’t it?

Hectare

Lastly, we have hectare, which contains about 2.47 acres.

Now, let’s move to commonly used land measurement units in the southern part of the country.

(Note: For a better understanding of our readers, we have converted all the units to sq. ft.)

A Primer to Land Measurement Units in India

Apart from Chatak and Lecha, some parts of East India also use Dhur and Kattha. Both these units of land measurement denote different sizes depending on the State. Dhur in Bihar is over 68 sq. ft, while in Tripura it is merely 3.6 sq. ft. In addition to Bihar and Tripura, it is also used in Jharkhand.

Kattha, on the other hand, is widely used in Assam, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and some parts of Bihar. One Kattha is equal to 719 sq. ft. However, this unit varies from State to State and is usually varies in the range of 600-2,800 sq. ft.