Prices for Raw Land Surged a Staggering 87% Since 2019, but a Correction Has Begun

The COVID-19 pandemic years triggered a land frenzy as enterprising developers lured by historically low interest rates snapped up vast tracts of land at a dizzying pace. The shift reshaped the market, sending raw land values surging faster than both semideveloped and build-ready lots.

According to a first-ever analysis of land listings by the Realtor.com® economic research team, overall land prices per acre surged roughly 77% between early 2019 and March 2026—a period during which inventory of for-sale parcels plunged 24%.  

In the first quarter of this year, there were 426,986 land listings on Realtor.com with a median price per acre of $62,365.

However, as the inaugural study illustrates, not all land listings are created equal. They are broadly categorized into three distinct tiers: raw lots, which have no development on them at all; partly developed parcels, which may feature some clearing or utility installation; and build-ready lots, which are marketed for immediate residential construction.

Among the three categories, untouched land has appreciated the most since 2019, with the median per-acre prices surging a staggering 86.5%, leaving build-ready lots trailing behind with a 53.3% increase. Prices on semideveloped acreage followed closely behind raw land, rising just over 80% over the same period.

Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner attributes the dramatic surge in undeveloped land values to two main drivers.

"Raw land was able to appreciate more quickly than build-ready listings because the starting price point was much lower, and also because build-ready listings have a natural cap: the amount that a home built on them can be sold for," explains Berner. "Raw land can be more of a speculative investment, and when the market for it got hot, its prices shot up."

Latham Jenkins, a real estate agent at Live Water Properties in Wyoming, notes that the steep appreciation of raw land in premier markets like Jackson Hole and the Greater Yellowstone area has been a powerful yet little-discussed undercurrent beneath headline-making property sales for many years.

"Buyers at the upper end of the market are not purchasing a finished product," Jenkins tells Realtor.com. "They are purchasing a position inside a landscape. The raw ground is the asset. What gets built on it is secondary. When that premise drives demand, raw land prices naturally decouple from the build-ready tier and begin to run on their own logic."

Jenkins points out that raw land's biggest draw is that it offers the buyer maximum control.

"The buyer selects the site, the architect, the builder, and the timeline," he says. "At the estate level, that matters enormously. You are building a generational asset, not a spec home."

But purchasing untouched land also comes with significant trade-offs, from high infrastructure investment costs to lengthy permitting timelines and carrying costs during development.

Jenkins says that in Teton County, WY, which is home to Jackson Hole, environmental review alone can add years to a development project.

"Water rights, access easements, and utility extensions are not trivial," warns the agent. "Build-ready lots absorb those costs into the purchase price and offer certainty and speed."

Ultimately, Jenkins believes the choice between raw land and a build-ready parcel is a personal one, dictated largely by whether a buyer seeks to shape a legacy from the ground up, or simply build a new home as soon as possible. Both paths are entirely valid.

"For buyers with a specific vision and long-time horizons, raw land wins," he says. "For buyers who want to be in the ground and building within 18 months, build-ready is often the more rational choice."

Raw land prices begin to correct

In the past year, the intense demand for land has softened as the market returned to pre-pandemic norms. In good news for developers, this shift has cooled prices across the board, with values of raw land lots experiencing the biggest correction.

Overall, land prices per acre have fallen by 0.5% from early 2025 to the beginning of 2026. Raw land listings have seen their price per acre drop 2.4% year over year, while build-ready properties lost just 1.1% in value. Meanwhile, semideveloped lots experienced a 0.8% price increase.

"The primary culprit for falling land prices is the slowdown in new residential construction activity, which finished 2025 below 2024 levels as builders faced increased cost pressures and weak homebuyer demand," explains Berner.

Western listings trail behind

Much like housing, land prices vary sharply by region, driven by unique local factors. Since 2019, the price per acre across all types of land lots has grown the most in the low-inventory, high-demand Northeast (101.4%), followed closely by the Midwest (89.5%) and South (84.9%). Western land listings have trailed far behind (32.1%). 

Jenkins says that several factors underlie the West's underperformance in the price-per-acre department, beginning with the fact that the inventory ceiling in local markets is already structurally low.

"In Teton County, less than 3% of the land base is privately held. There is not a large raw-land pool available for builders to activate, which limits the volume-driven price discovery that happens in more open markets," says the agent.

Price appreciation is further hindered by Western permitting and regulatory environments, which are more complicated and time-consuming than elsewhere in the U.S. Specifically, fire risk assessments and environmental reviews inject high cost and uncertainty.

"Third, labor and materials logistics in remote Western geographies remain expensive," adds the agent. "Builders rationally followed the path of least resistance eastward, where lots are larger in supply, entitlement is faster, and margins are more predictable."

Additionally, Berner points out that the West experienced the steepest pullback in new residential construction activity, with single-family building permitting declining faster than in any other region in 2025. 

"As builders pulled back, so did their demand for land," explains the Realtor.com economist. "At the same time, several Western states have seen their housing inventories return to or exceed pre-pandemic levels, a sign that the pandemic-era supply crunch that once fueled competition for land has largely unwound."

With more homes available for buyers and less urgency among builders to break ground on new projects, the land market in the West has cooled.

On the other hand, the Northeast, which had the fewest land listings for sale before the pandemic, saw prices grow the most because the already scarce supply of buildable land has shrunk even more.

Over the past year, the South has seen modest price-per-acre growth of 1.3%, followed by the Northeast, at 0.9%, and the Midwest, at 0.2%. Meanwhile, the median price for a Western land lot plunged 5.9% compared to the beginning of 2025, driven by subdued builder activity and a housing market that has returned to or exceeded pre-pandemic inventory levels in multiple states, making the need for new land acquisition less pressing.