You may have heard that foreigners cannot own land in Zanzibar, and strictly speaking, that is true. What is also true, and far less widely understood, is that you can still buy a villa or an apartment here, hold it in your own name on a registered title, rent it out, sell it, and leave it to your children. The vehicle that makes all of that possible is the 99-year leasehold, and the gap between how alarming it sounds and how secure it actually is sits at the heart of almost every nervous first conversation. This article is written to close that gap. In this guide, we'll explore the legal basis for foreign ownership and since when, what a 99-year leasehold gives you in practice compared to freehold, whether the lease can be inherited, sold, or transferred, what happens when the term runs out and how renewal works, and how the condominium and ZIPA structure ties the whole thing together.
The short version, which is worth stating before the details, is that a registered 99-year lease in Zanzibar gives you nearly the full bundle of ownership rights, backed by law, for a term that outlasts most lifetimes and passes to the next generation. Leasehold is the legal form. Ownership, in every way that matters day to day, is the practical reality.
Why is all land in Zanzibar state-owned
To understand the leasehold, you have to start with the principle underneath it. Under Zanzibar's Constitution and the Land Tenure Act of 1992, land cannot be privately owned in perpetuity. It is held by the government in trust for the people, vested in the President of Zanzibar on behalf of the public. This is the foundation of the whole system.
The consequence is even-handed in a way that surprises many buyers. Freehold, meaning absolute and permanent ownership of the soil, is not available to anyone, not to foreigners and not to Zanzibari citizens either. What a citizen receives is a Right of Occupancy, a long-term or perpetual right to use a piece of land, but not ownership of the land itself. Foreign individuals, including mainland Tanzanians, cannot be granted a Right of Occupancy directly. So the rule is not that foreigners are singled out and shut out. It is that nobody owns the land outright, and everyone holds rights to use it instead.
That distinction matters because it reframes the anxiety. You are not being offered a lesser version of something locals enjoy. You are entering the same leasehold system that governs all land on the islands, through a route the law has purpose-built for non-citizens.
What changed in 2010, and what the law says now
The door for foreign buyers opened in 2010, and the date is worth remembering because it anchors how settled this framework now is. The landmark reform was the Condominium Act Number 10 of 2010, which for the first time explicitly allowed both locals and foreigners to purchase residential units under a leasehold arrangement, with an individual title registered in the buyer's own name. Foreign ownership of property in Zanzibar has therefore been legal and constitutionally grounded since 2010, not a recent or experimental concession.
What has happened since 2010 is a steady reinforcement rather than any reversal. The Land Transfer Act of 1994 had already created the Land Transfer Board that oversees transfers of land interests. The Zanzibar Investment Promotion and Protection Act, in its 2018 form and with its 2023 updates, set out the process for foreign investment in real estate. The Zanzibar Investment Act of 2023, ratified into force in early 2024, went further, streamlining approvals and formalising incentives and tax breaks for strategic investments, and a further set of regulations rolled out in 2025 layered on additional investor protections and reinforced the Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority (ZIPA) as the single window for foreign property buyers. As a reputational marker that international banks tend to watch, Tanzania was also removed from the Financial Action Task Force grey list in 2025 after strengthening its anti-money laundering controls.
Read together, the pattern is the reassuring part. Each successive piece of legislation since 2010 has reinforced foreign ownership rights rather than weakened them. A buyer signing today is buying into a framework that is more formalised, with more protections, than the one available even a few years ago.
What a 99-year leasehold actually gives you
When you buy as a foreigner, what you receive is a long-term lease from the government, commonly called a Right of Occupancy lease, rather than fee simple ownership of the land. The headline term is 99 years, which is generally the longest lease available, and it is usually structured in phases. The government typically grants an initial term of 33 years, renewable for further 33-year periods, which add up to 99 years in total.
That interest is not a handshake. It is secured by a registered title deed in your name, issued by the Zanzibar Land Commission. For an apartment or villa in a condominium project, this is a Unit Title, and for a standalone plot or house, it is a Government Lease Certificate. The title is recorded in the public land registry exactly like any other property deed, which is what gives your leasehold its legal certainty. The document names you as the holder, sets out the land, the term, and any conditions, and is yours to rely on.
The comparison with freehold is where the worry usually dissolves. A 99-year horizon is so long that it routinely exceeds a human lifetime, which is why the leasehold is often described as near freehold or near perpetual. Officials have made the point that because 99 years is longer than a lifespan and the lease can be inherited, it practically equals ownership in its duration. The one genuine distinction is that you pay a modest annual ground rent to the government as the ultimate landowner. For foreign-held urban property that ground rent is $0.35 per square metre per year, with a flat $22 annual property tax per dwelling billed alongside it, both token sums in the context of a property investment. Beyond that nominal rent and the acknowledgement that the state owns the soil, you hold the full practical bundle of ownership rights for the life of the lease.
Can you sell it, pass it on, or rent it out
This is the question that decides whether a leasehold is a real asset or a fragile permission, and in Zanzibar, the answer is reassuring on every count. Once your leasehold title is registered, you have the legal right to do all of the things an owner expects to do.
You can live in the property as a residence or use it as a holiday home, with no additional permit required. You can rent it out for income, whether as a long-term let to a tenant or a short-term holiday rental to tourists, under the same rules that local owners follow. You can resell the property to any eligible buyer, local or foreign, by transferring the remaining lease term, and the new buyer simply steps into your position with the same right to renew up to the 99-year maximum. You can bequeath the property to your heirs, because the leasehold interest is inheritable, so your children or chosen beneficiaries inherit the remaining term and can renew it for further terms of their own. You can also mortgage or use the lease as security for a loan, since it is legally permissible to encumber the lease, even as local banks are still developing mortgage products for leasehold titles.
These rights are not informal customs. They are enshrined in the Condominium Act of 2010 and the related land laws, which guarantee that, as long as you follow the conditions, such as using the land for its approved purpose and paying the ground rent, your leasehold cannot be arbitrarily taken away. Even in the rare event that the government needed land for a genuine public interest, the law requires fair compensation at market value. That combination of transfer rights, inheritance rights, and protection against arbitrary loss is what makes a Zanzibar lease function as a genuine asset rather than a temporary licence.
What happens at the end of 99 years
The most common single question is what happens when the term is up, and the honest answer is that very few current owners will ever personally find out, because a century is a long time. The mechanism, though, is clear.
The 99-year lease is renewable, and you, or whoever owns the property at that point, can apply to extend it as it nears expiry. In practice, the renewals are treated as a formality so long as the lease conditions have been met, the ground rent has been paid, and the property has been used in line with its zoning. Renewals at the 33-year mark within the term follow the same logic, and owners can apply for an extension well before the final expiration rather than waiting for the clock to run down. Zanzibar's laws allow leases to be extended even beyond 99 years, subject to government approval at that future time, so the leasehold can, in principle, continue for as long as it is needed.
If a lease were genuinely not renewed at expiry, which is a rare scenario, the rights to the land would revert to the government as the ultimate owner. By that time, though, a full century would have passed, and the practical reality throughout the term is that you remain free to sell or transfer the lease whenever you wish. You are never personally locked in for 99 years. You hold a long, renewable, transferable interest that you can exit at any point by selling the remainder to the next buyer.
How the condominium and ZIPA structure fit together
There are two main routes by which a foreigner secures a leasehold title, and both run through government oversight that exists to protect the transaction rather than to obstruct it.
The simplest route is buying a unit in an approved condominium development. Under the Condominium Act, the developer typically holds the master lease to the land and facilitates the issuance of an individual 99-year lease title in your name for your specific unit. You do not need to form a company or take a local partner. You become the registered leasehold owner of the unit, with full rights to occupy, rent, sell, or bequeath it, and the title reflects your share in the common property. Because the project has already been vetted for foreign ownership, this is the streamlined path that most individual buyers take.
The second route is for a standalone plot or house outside a condominium scheme, which a foreigner usually acquires through a Zanzibar-registered company, sometimes a special purpose vehicle. The company, which can be fully foreign-owned, applies for a Government Lease of up to 99 years, and you hold the shares, which gives you control of the property. This route carries investment thresholds. A fully foreign-owned company in real estate or tourism may need to demonstrate minimum capital, often in the region of $2.5 million for a 100 percent foreign-owned hotel or real estate project, or $300,000 for other projects, with lower requirements where there are local shareholders. It is more involved, but it opens the door to larger and non-condominium purchases.
Whichever route you take, every foreign acquisition must obtain a no-objection clearance from ZIPA, pass the Land Transfer Board, and be registered with the Land Commission, which then issues your title. These are procedural safeguards, not obstacles, and your lawyer typically handles the submission once you have signed the sale agreement. The whole process, from signed contract to a registered 99-year lease, usually takes in the region of two to three months, and the transaction attracts a stamp duty of 1 percent of the declared price, among other closing costs. Once the title is in your hand, the government's role recedes, and you simply enjoy the rights described above.
For the broader question of whether to buy a finished unit or commit to one still under construction within these same structures, see off-plan or completed, which way to buy in Zanzibar.
Residency as a built-in bonus
One reason the leasehold matters beyond the property itself is that buying can also qualify you to live here. Under current rules, a foreign buyer who invests at least $100,000 in a ZIPA-approved development is eligible for a renewable residence permit, a Class C status often informally called the Golden Visa, introduced in its current Class C11 form in 2024. The permit is typically issued for two years at a time and renews while you hold the property, and it extends to the investor's spouse and children.
Two honest caveats keep this in proportion. The permit is residency, not citizenship, and it does not by itself grant the right to work, which is a separate authorisation. The cost is modest, in the region of $500 for the main investor with small fees for dependents. For a buyer who wants to spend part or all of the year in their island home, it turns a property purchase into a lifestyle as well as an asset. For the full details of how residency by property investment works, see the Zanzibar Golden Visa, gaining residency by property investment.
How secure is it really, heading into 2026
Stripped of the legal vocabulary, the question every buyer is really asking is whether their money and their home are safe. The framework heading into 2026 answers that with unusual clarity.
Foreign ownership has been legal and constitutionally grounded since 2010, and every major reform since then has pointed in the same direction. The Condominium Act of 2010 opened the market, the Zanzibar Investment Act of 2023 and its 2025 regulations reinforced investor protections and formalised ZIPA as the single window, and the 2025 removal of Tanzania from the Financial Action Task Force grey list signalled a cleaner reputational footing to the international banks that track such things. Each of these is a brick in the same wall. The direction of travel has been steadily toward more formal protection for foreign buyers, not less.
The market context around that legal stability is supportive, too. Zanzibar closed 2025 with 917,167 international arrivals, a year-on-year increase of nearly 25 percent over the 736,755 visitors recorded in 2024. The one-million annual visitor milestone has now been reached, and supply remains tight at only 600 to 800 new investment-grade units expected across 2025 and 2026 combined against a structural housing gap of roughly 60,000 units. A secure legal framework is most valuable when it sits beneath a rising market, because it lets an owner act on the upside with confidence rather than caution. For the full demand, supply, and risk picture, see the Zanzibar property market outlook for the year ahead.
The takeaway for 2026 is that the 99-year leasehold is not a loophole or a workaround. It is a mature, codified, repeatedly reinforced system that gives foreign buyers long, secure, inheritable, transferable rights to property, under titles registered in their own names. For the common legal fears about buying in Zanzibar and the reality behind them, see myth versus reality, the legal fears about buying property in Zanzibar.
Final thoughts
The phrase 99-year leasehold sounds like a limitation, and it lands as a worry for almost every first-time buyer who hears it. Held up to the light, it turns out to mean something close to the opposite. You receive a registered title in your own name, the right to live in the property, rent it, resell it to anyone, and pass it to your heirs, a term that outlasts a lifetime and renews beyond it, and the protection of a legal framework that has been reinforced at every step since 2010. The only practical difference from freehold is a token annual ground rent and the principle that the state owns the soil. Everything you would actually do with a property, you can do.
Vela's view is that the leasehold should reassure rather than deter. Once you understand that nobody owns land outright in Zanzibar, that the lease is registered and renewable, and that ZIPA and the Land Commission exist to protect the transaction, the system reads as exactly what it is, a careful balance between national land sovereignty and genuine, secure foreign ownership. A home for life and beyond, in all but name. Tropical lifestyle and secure investment, with the security written into law.
Ready to take the next step? Vela's team is here to walk you through the leasehold title, the ZIPA approval, and the registration process for a specific studio, apartment, or villa, so the legal path from offer to title deed is clear before you commit. Reach out for a personalised conversation, and we will explain every step with you, not at you.
