Short answer. Not automatically. Under Article 1540 of the Civil Code, where land sold at a price per unit turns out larger than the contract states, you may take only the area stated and reject the excess. If you keep the whole area, you pay for it at the contract rate.
What the law says
there is a greater area or number in the immovable than that stated in the contract, the vendee may accept the area included in the contract and reject the rest. If he accepts the whole area, he must pay for the same at the contract rate.
Civil Code, Article 1540 — Excess Area in a Unit-Price Sale. Read the full provision →
The choice belongs to the buyer
Article 1540 says that where there is a greater area or number in the immovable than that stated in the contract, the vendee may accept the area included in the contract and reject the rest. If he accepts the whole area, he must pay for the same at the contract rate. Notice who is given the option. It is the buyer who decides whether to take the surplus, not the seller who decides to sell it to you. A seller cannot present the excess as an accomplished fact and send a bill for it. If you are content with the area you bargained for, you may confine yourself to that and leave the rest with him.
This applies to a sale by unit of measure
The article opens with in the case of the preceding article, which ties it to sales of real estate made at a rate per unit of measure — so many pesos per square metre, with the total price computed from a stated area. That is the setting in which a shortfall or surplus in area naturally changes the price. Where instead an identified parcel was sold for one lump sum, described by its boundaries, the bargain is for the land within those boundaries and the price generally does not move with the survey result. So the first question is not what the survey shows but how your deed states the price. Read that clause before anything else.
"At the contract rate" leaves nothing to negotiate
If you elect to keep the whole area, the article fixes what you pay: the same rate the contract already carries. The seller cannot reprice the surplus at today's market value, at a premium, or at what a neighbouring lot fetched. Nor can he treat your election as an opening for new conditions. Equally, the option is a real choice and not a free gift — you cannot keep the extra ground and decline to pay for it. Make your election in writing, state which option you are taking, and keep proof of when the seller received it.
A larger occupied area is not the same as a larger lot
Be careful before treating the surplus as yours to claim. Ground you occupy beyond the technical description may not belong to the seller at all — it may be a neighbour's land, a road lot, a creek or shoreline area that cannot be privately owned, or simply an old fence in the wrong place. A relocation survey by a licensed geodetic engineer, checked against the certified technical description on the title, is the sensible first step. Bringing registered title into line with a genuinely larger area is a separate legal process, not something the seller can accomplish by issuing a revised receipt.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Dasmariñas T. Arcaina and Magnani T. Banta vs. Noemi L. Ingram, represented by Ma. Nenette L. Archinue, G.R. No. 196444, February 15, 2017 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Josefina L. Valdez, et al. vs. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 140715, September 24, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →