A friend of mine wanted to rent a house and turn it into both her home and her business office. The landlord seemed genuinely open to selling it to her eventually, so she got ahead of it. New plumbing, a converted section for the office, the kind of investment that only makes sense if you’re staying for years, not months. It was a good plan, right up until she asked herself one question. What happens if the landlord ends the lease before that “eventually” ever arrives?

That question is worth sitting with, because the answer is usually the same. She’d have spent real money improving a property she doesn’t own, with nothing to show for it and no real way to get that money back. And there’s a second version of the same trap that’s easy to miss. What if the renovations work so well that the property is suddenly worth a lot more, and the owner decides to sell to whoever’s now willing to pay that higher price? My friend would have paid to increase the value of a property that then prices her out of buying it.

Zambian courts have already weighed in on exactly this kind of situation, and the ruling was blunt. In a judgment, the High Court held that a person who is not the legal owner of land but proceeds to develop it does so at their own risk, and cannot be compensated for what they built. No matter how solid the understanding felt at the time, the person who improved the property was the one left with nothing.

Get the right to buy in writing before you spend anything

A friendly understanding with a landlord isn’t a contract, and it isn’t enforceable if things change. If there’s a real intention for you to buy the property eventually, that needs to be a signed agreement fixing the price and the terms, not a conversation you both remember differently a year later.

Treat renovation money as gone until title says otherwise

Before you spend on a property you don’t yet own, ask what your position is if the deal falls through tomorrow. If the honest answer is that you’d have no legal claim to that money or the improvements, don’t spend it until the agreement in writing changes that answer.

The same risk applies to land, not just rentals

It isn’t only renovations. The court has been just as clear about people who build on land before it’s registered in their name, whether that’s based on a letter, a verbal promise, or a letter from a local council. None of those things are ownership. Only registered title is, and that’s what the Courts have decided.

Ask what happens if it actually goes well

It’s tempting to only weigh the downside of the deal falling apart. But a plan that works, where the property becomes genuinely more valuable because of what you put into it, can leave you just as exposed if your right to buy at a fixed price was never put in writing.  The last thing you want is to find yourself priced out of a property you helped to improve.

Why this matters

Every version of this starts the same way: the relationship feels solid enough that the paperwork feels like a formality. It isn’t. Confirm what you actually own, or have a binding right to, before you spend anything improving it.

If you’re weighing a renovation, a build, or a purchase on a property where the ownership picture isn’t fully settled, make sure you have properly protected yourself before any money moves, not after.