Ropani, aana, bigha, kattha: converting Nepali land units (and what one aana actually costs)
Convert ropani, aana, paisa, bigha, kattha and dhur to square feet, the base-16 trap that trips up buyers, and what one aana costs in Kathmandu.
A cousin forwarded me a land listing last Asar: "0-8-2-1, Sitapaila, Rs 1.9 crore." He wanted to know whether the price was fair. The four numbers meant nothing to him. They are how every Nepali lalpurja records area: ropani, aana, paisa, daam, in that order. So 0-8-2-1 reads as zero ropani, eight aana, two paisa, one daam, a touch over half a ropani. Once you can read the four numbers, the rest is arithmetic: Rs 1.9 crore on roughly 8.5 aana works out to about Rs 22 lakh per aana, and the question answers itself.
Most land confusion in Nepal is unit confusion. A plot in Biratnagar gets quoted per dhur, a plot in Lalitpur per aana, and the two numbers look comparable until you notice that one aana is almost two dhur. Brokers quote in whichever unit makes the price sound smallest. Sellers say "three and a half ropani" in a way that quietly adds eight aana. The measurements themselves are fixed by a 1963 law. The mistakes live in the conversion.
Two systems, one country
Nepal never standardised onto a single land unit, so the country uses two parallel systems split roughly by geography.
| System | Units | Where it's used |
|---|---|---|
| Ropani-aana-paisa-daam | ropani, aana, paisa, daam | All hill and mountain districts, including Kathmandu Valley and Pokhara |
| Bigha-kattha-dhur | bigha, kattha, dhur | Terai (plains) districts: Morang, Dhanusha, Bara, Parsa, Rupandehi, Banke and others |
Both are recognised in law. The legal basis is the Land (Survey and Measurement) Act, 2019 B.S. (1963 A.D.), administered by the Survey Department under the Ministry of Land Management (statute text on FAOLEX). Survey records increasingly also carry the area in hectares and square metres, the SI units, but the local unit is what every buyer, broker and lalpurja still uses day to day.
Two inner-Terai districts blur the line. Chitwan and Nawalparasi sit at the hill-plains transition, and deals there appear in both systems (Purbeli Real Estate). If you are buying in Bharatpur or around Narayangadh, confirm which unit a listing means before you compare it to anything.
The hill system: ropani, aana, paisa, daam
This is the system you meet in the Kathmandu Valley. A ropani is the top unit, and it divides by 16, then by 4, then by 4 again.
| Unit | Equals | Square feet | Square metres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ropani | 16 aana | 5,476 | 508.72 |
| 1 aana | 4 paisa | 342.25 | 31.80 |
| 1 paisa | 4 daam | 85.56 | 7.95 |
| 1 daam | — | 21.39 | 1.99 |
Source: conversion tables from Global IME Bank and EngineeringNepal, which agree to the figure.
A few reference points worth committing to memory. A ropani is roughly 508 sq m, about the size of two tennis courts. The standard Valley residential plot is 4 aana, which is 1,369 sq ft, enough for a modest house and a small setback. The Ministry of Urban Development bars building permits on plots under 2.8 aana in the Valley (Kathmandu Post), so anything advertised below that is land you may not be able to build on. Eight aana is half a ropani; that is the 0-8-2-1 from the listing above.
The Terai system: bigha, kattha, dhur
Cross the hills into the plains and the units change entirely. A bigha is large, and it divides by 20, then by 20 again.
| Unit | Equals | Square feet | Square metres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bigha | 20 kattha | 72,900 | 6,772.63 |
| 1 kattha | 20 dhur | 3,645 | 338.63 |
| 1 dhur | — | 182.25 | 16.93 |
Source: Global IME Bank and EngineeringNepal.
The scale is the thing to internalise. A single bigha is 72,900 sq ft, which is 13.31 ropani. A farmer in Morang who says he is selling "two bigha" is selling more than 26 ropani, a parcel that in Valley terms would be enormous. At the small end, a dhur is 182.25 sq ft, roughly half an aana, which is why Terai city plots get quoted per dhur. A "10 dhur" residential plot in Biratnagar is 1,822 sq ft, comparable to a 5-aana Kathmandu plot.
Converting between the two
When a deal crosses regions, or when you want to compare a Terai price to a Valley price, square feet is the common ground. Both systems anchor to it, so convert each to sq ft and then compare. The cross-unit equivalents below are calculated from the sq-ft figures above, not separate measurements.
| From | To | Multiply by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 ropani | bigha | 0.0752 |
| 1 bigha | ropani | 13.31 |
| 1 aana | dhur | ≈ 1.88 |
| 1 kattha | aana | ≈ 10.65 |
| 1 ropani | dhur | ≈ 30.05 |
So one aana (342.25 sq ft) is about 1.88 dhur (182.25 sq ft each). One kattha is a little under 11 aana. A ropani is about 30 dhur. These are the conversions that catch people: a Terai seller quoting Rs 4 lakh per dhur and a Valley buyer thinking in aana are roughly Rs 7.5 lakh per aana apart on the same land, before anyone has negotiated.
For quick checks, the surveyor firm RRP's area converter and the Basobaas unit converter both handle all six units. There is no converter on a government domain; the Survey Department's Mero Kitta portal gives you the cadastral map and the recorded area, but you do the unit math yourself.
The base-16 trap
The single most expensive mistake in Nepali land deals is reading ropani-aana as a decimal. It is not. One ropani is 16 aana, so one aana is 0.0625 ropani, not 0.1.
That means 3.5 ropani is 3 ropani 8 aana, not 3 ropani 5 aana. Someone who reads the ".5" as five aana undercounts by three aana. In a Sitapaila-grade location at Rs 22 lakh per aana, three aana is Rs 66 lakh of land that quietly disappears in a misread. Closer to the core, at the Rs 50 lakh government floor, the same three-aana gap is Rs 1.5 crore, and the market figure is higher still.
The reverse error shows up too. To turn aana into decimal ropani, divide by 16: 10 aana is 0.625 ropani, not 1.0. A lalpurja written 1-10-0-0 is 1 ropani 10 aana, which is 1.625 ropani or 8,899 sq ft, not "one and a bit." When a listing, a loan application, and a sale deed have to agree on area, this is where they silently diverge.
One more error appears in careless sources: the figure 508.72 sq m belongs to a ropani, not an aana. An aana is 31.80 sq m. If a converter or a broker tells you your aana is 508 sq m, they have multiplied your plot by sixteen.
What one aana actually costs
Two numbers describe every plot: the government minimum valuation and the market price. They are not the same, and confusing them is its own kind of conversion error.
The government minimum valuation (न्यूनतम मूल्याङ्कन) is the floor the Malpot office uses to calculate the registration fee. Kathmandu Metropolitan City sets it in its annual Financial Act. For FY 2025/26, the rates per aana run like this (The Annapurna Express, 16 July 2025):
| KMC zone | Government valuation per aana (FY 2025/26) |
|---|---|
| Hanumandhoka, New Road core, Indra Chowk, Asan, Durbar Marg, Maitighar | Rs 50 lakh |
| Putalisadak, Bagbazar, Ratna Park main roads | Rs 40 lakh |
| Khichapokhari south, Ganabahal, New Road Gate–Mahabouddha | Rs 36 lakh |
| Lainchaur, Narayan Gopal Chowk, Koteshwor–Thapathali corridor | Rs 32 lakh |
| Gaushala–Dhobikhola ring road | Rs 30 lakh |
These are not sale prices. They are the minimum on which your registration fee and CGT get computed. The market price sits above the floor. Property-valuation firms estimate the government rate at roughly a third of actual market value in prime areas, though that ratio is a working estimate from the valuation trade, not a published statistic (Punarvaasu Nepal). For a real asking price in a specific area, the live listings on GharGhaderi and similar sites are a better guide than any single headline number, since self-reported asks at least reflect what sellers currently want.
In the Terai, plots are quoted per kattha or per dhur, and asking prices on listing platforms in 2024-26 looked like this:
| City | Area | Asking price (listing sites) |
|---|---|---|
| Bharatpur | Lanku (prime) | Rs 80 lakh per kattha |
| Bharatpur | Madhipuri (mid) | Rs 35 lakh per kattha (≈ Rs 1.75 lakh per dhur) |
| Biratnagar | Bargachhi | Rs 4–6 lakh per dhur |
Sources: 99Aana, GharJaggaSansar, and Biratnagar city listings. Treat all of these as self-reported asks rather than verified transaction prices.
The market is thinner than it was
Land is not selling the way it did three years ago. Nationwide deed registrations fell for three straight months into FY 2025/26: the month of Ashoj saw 23,353 registrations raising Rs 2.73 arba in revenue, down from 30,527 deeds in the same month a year earlier (Fiscal Nepal, 27 October 2025). The cited cause is not a price crash. It is a suspension of land plotting since Shrawan 1 and a new rule requiring approval for transactions above Rs 30 million, both of which froze a chunk of the speculative market.
For a buyer, a thinner market means more room to negotiate below the asking price and more time to do the nine-document verification properly before any bayana. It also means the per-aana headline you see on a listing is a starting position, not a clearing price.
Older units still quoted in deals
A handful of pre-survey units survive in conversation, mostly among older landowners and in rural deeds. They are worth recognising even if you never use them (EngineeringNepal):
- Khetmuri: 1 khetmuri = 25 ropani. Used for large agricultural holdings in the hills.
- Matomuri: 4 matomuri = 1 ropani, so 1 matomuri = 4 aana.
- Haat and gaj: length units, not area. A gaj is one yard (0.9144 m); a haat is about 1.5 ft. They show up when someone describes a frontage or a road width, not a plot.
If a deed quotes khetmuri, convert it to ropani first, then to whatever unit you actually think in. A "two khetmuri" hill plot is 50 ropani, a serious parcel.
What you actually need to know
- Convert everything to square feet before you compare two prices. One aana is 342.25 sq ft, one dhur is 182.25 sq ft, one ropani is 5,476 sq ft, one bigha is 72,900 sq ft. A per-dhur Terai quote and a per-aana Valley quote are not comparable until both are in sq ft, and the unit a broker chooses is usually the one that makes the number look smallest.
- Ropani-aana is base-16. Three-point-five ropani is 3 ropani 8 aana, and 10 aana is 0.625 ropani. Misreading the decimal as aana is the error that hides three aana, which in Kathmandu is more than a crore. Read the lalpurja's four numbers in order: ropani, aana, paisa, daam.
- The government valuation is a floor, not a price. KMC's FY 2025/26 minimum reaches Rs 50 lakh per aana in the core, and the market sits above it. Use the Malpot rate to estimate your registration fee, and live listings to gauge what a seller will actually take, especially in a slow market where deeds are down year on year.
If you have a lalpurja in front of you and the four numbers are not adding up, or a Terai deed in kattha you are trying to price against a Valley plot, email parjanya57@gmail.com and we can work the conversion through together.
This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the housing and real-estate section.