How Big Is 5 Acres of Land? (With Helpful Visual Comparisons) 


An Acre is a weird unit of measurement that is used for land only. So just how big is 5 acres?  You’re curious how much land you’d own. Here are some helpful comparisons.

Five acres of land is approximately 217,800 square feet. You’d take the number of square feet per acre, which is 43,560 square feet, and multiply it by 5.

That helps, to a point, but just how big is 5 acres of land? The size of a football field? Bigger? What could you do with so much land? We’ll tell you all this and more ahead so you can make the most of all 5 acres of land that you’ve purchased!  

Why 217,800 Square Feet?

If you’ve read our other two posts discussing land acreage, then it should come as no surprise to you that acreage is measured in square feet. A square foot is a square’s area provided that the sides of the square are each at least 1 foot. 

You mostly hear of square feet when shopping around for apartments, homes, or even commercial office buildings to rent, but land is sometimes measured in square feet as well. That’s the case with acres of land. 

Each acre is 43,560 square feet. Well, that’s the simplest definition. If you need a refresher, an acre is technically the area of a furlong by a chain. One furlong is 660 feet and a chain is 66 feet in length. It gets technical, with rods and links and all, but we won’t talk about that this time since we’ve done it before.

So using simplified terms, if one acre is 43,560 square feet, then all you have to do is the basic math from the intro. Take 43,560, multiply it by 5, and you get 217,800 square feet. 

If you want to check your math, you may remember that 10 acres of land is 435,600 square feet. If you take that number and divide it by 2, you get 217,800. This makes sense since 5 acres is half the size of 10 acres. 

Visualizing 5 Acres of Land: 5 Handy Examples

According to land-selling resource Land Soar, you may pay anywhere from $12,000 to $60,000 for 5 acres of land. In other words, it’s no cheap investment. Will you get the value of your money? 

Let’s make it easier to visualize the land you’d own with these 5 cool examples.

Nearly 5 Football Fields

You were curious before if 5 acres is big enough for at least one football field, and it is. Oh, and way, way more. Your land is the equivalent of 4.53 football fields since a full football field with the end zones is 1.32 acres. 

Imagine watching almost 5 football games side by side by side. You could do that if you own 5 acres of land! 

16 Homes 

Although this depends on the size of the homes themselves, if you look at an average residential housing block, it has anywhere from 6 to 8 homes. With your amount of acreage, you could at most accommodate 16 homes and at fewest 12 homes. That’s enough properties to start your own mini housing community!

780 Parking Spaces

In our article on the size of 10 acres, we mentioned a Center for Profitable Agriculture at the University of Tennessee report. In that report, the researchers equated that 1 acre can hold 156 parking spots. 

That tells us that on 5 acres of land, you can fit 780 parking spots across the entirety of your property. Kew Gardens, a botanical garden park in Queens, New York, offers only 272 parking spaces, so you’d have more than twice that number. 

75 Tennis Courts

We talked before about how you get nearly 5 football fields with 5 acres of land, but what if you’re a fan of tennis instead of football? Worry not, as you could fit more tennis courts than you know what to do with across 5 acres, 75 courts in all. 

How did we get to that number? One acre of land can hold 15 tennis courts, so it’s just basic multiplication. The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, also in Queens, has 22 tennis courts in all, and it’s the site of the US Open! You’d have more than enough courts for your own US Open. 

Almost 8,000 Potatoes

Are you craving the spuddy goodness of potatoes? You could fit a whole heck of a lot of potatoes if you have 5 acres of land. Laying out a 5-inch row of potatoes on the ground across a single acre would require 1,584 potatoes. You could spread 7,920 potatoes across 5 acres. 

How Long Does It Take to Walk Across 5 Acres?

If you’re in the mood for a walk, you figure it would be some good exercise to explore your 5 acres of land in full. Just how much time should you set aside to cross your entire expanse of land?

Well, let’s assume you’re walking at a regular pace, which is 3 to 4 miles per hour. This isn’t speed-walking nor is it a very leisurely stroll, but the pace you’d walk when you have places to go but you’re not in a huge rush to get there. 

You’d traverse a whole acre at that walking speed in roughly 35.61 seconds, or 36 seconds to make things easier. That’s assuming you don’t slow down your easy pace nor that you stop for breaks or for any other reason.

Now you add 4 more acres, which is a total walking time of 178.05 seconds. By converting seconds to minutes, we get 2.9675 minutes or about 3 minutes to walk 5 acres of land. 

What Can You Do with 5 Acres of Land?

What’s clear to you now is that you have plenty of land at your disposal with 5 acres, but how should you use it all? While that’s ultimately up to you to decide, here are some suggestions to get you started. 

Build a Large but Comfortably-Sized Home

When future homeowners who want to build their dream homes begin searching for empty land, a 5-acre expanse is considered large enough for many of them. A home on 5 acres would have enough rooms to accommodate a large family with several children. You could also have multiple bathrooms in your home and a huge yard. Who doesn’t want that?

Use the Space for Commercial Business (with a Well-Sized Parking Lot)

If you already have a home but you’re still coming into a land deal for 5 acres, then use the space for your financial gain! At 5 acres, you can’t really build a theme park, but you would have sufficient room for a building complex or retail center. 

Depending on the size of the building you decide on, you could then add a parking lot with several hundred spaces available. 

Make Your Own Professional Tennis Facility

For serious tennis lovers, you could realistically have a tennis facility even larger than the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. You wouldn’t be able to live on your property, but you could theoretically host professional tennis games, which is cool in a whole different way.  

Add a Farm to a Smaller Home 

You can also combine business and pleasure with a home and a small farm on 5 acres. The average 5-acre space can fit 5 dairy cows, so maybe you start selling milk or home-churned butter? The possibilities are nearly endless. 

Final Thoughts

With 5 acres of land, you have 217,800 square feet. That’s enough space for 16 regular-sized homes, almost 800 parking spaces, and more tennis courts than at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. 

No matter how you decide to use your 5 acres of land, this is enough space for some very cool dreams to come true! 

Related Content

Here is a list of other articles on outdoortroop.com which show you visual comparisons for different sizes of land acres, all with helpful visual comparisons.

Geoff

Geoff Southworth is the creator of RealEstateInfoGuide.com, the site that helps new homeowners, investors, and homeowners-to-be successfully navigate the complex world of property ownership. Geoff is a real estate investor of 8 years has had experience as a manager of a debt-free, private real estate equity fund, as well as a Registered Nurse in Emergency Trauma and Cardiac Cath Lab Care. As a result, he has developed a unique “people first, business second” approach to real estate.

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