Property Valuation in Tanzania: Who May Sign, and Why It Matters

This page is the property-valuation operating file: which signature turns a figure into a document a lender, TRA or a tribunal will act on. It is not a manual on method, nor a substitute for the instruction letter.

• Pricing the company, not the plot: business valuation
• Records a valuer asks for: books behind the returns
• First-quarter sequence: the 90-day plan
• Owner is not a company: NGO, trust or guarantee

As at 15 September 2026. Confirm the signatory at vrb.go.tz and the approval route at lands.go.tz. This file rests on Cap. 138, the Land Act, Cap. 113, and Caps. 189 and 332 at TRA.

Who the Act lets sign

Act No. 7 of 2016 put the valuation of land and buildings behind a register, now cited at Cap. 138 in the Revised Edition 2023. The Board keeps that register, issues practising certificates and admits the firms reports are signed through. Pricing property for reward while off it is an offence, not a matter of professional taste.

The individual must sit in a class permitting independent practice: a candidate or graduate valuer works under supervision and cannot sign in his own right. His certificate must be current for the year the report is dated. And the practice on the cover must itself be admitted: a registered valuer on unregistered letterhead still produces a document a credit committee refuses.

Cap. 138 and the Board bind the Mainland. Land is a non-Union matter, so Zanzibar runs its own tenure and duty desks.

The Chief Government Valuer’s endorsement

A registered signature opens the file; where the State is the audience it does not close it. The Chief Government Valuer, in the Ministry responsible for Lands, approves reports prepared for statutory purposes: acquisition compensation, rating rolls, revenue and court work. Without that endorsement the desk receiving it holds a private opinion.

Approval stands between the signed report and any payment or registration depending on it, and it is not same-day work. The office can also move the number.

Non-citizens: fix tenure before you instruct

Where a party is not a Tanzanian citizen, settle tenure first. The Land Act, Cap. 113 bars allocation of land to a non-citizen except for investment purposes; the route is a derivative right from the Tanzania Investment Centre under the Tanzania Investment Act, 2022. Cap. 113 also deems a body corporate a non-citizen where most shareholders are, so a locally incorporated company can be foreign for land purposes alone.

Activities reserved to citizens sit at GN No. 487A of 2025; check it against the business being valued. The valuer is policed in the same spirit: a foreign practitioner is admitted not on his qualification but on temporary registration for a named assignment, usually alongside a local practice. Commissioning before this settles wastes money: the interest priced changes with the answer: granted right, derivative right, or sub-lease.

What the report is for decides the signature

From instruction to an accepted report

1. Write the purpose into the instruction. Compensation, security, transfer duty, reinstatement cover and financial reporting draw different bases of value from one plot.
2. Check the signatory before engaging him: class, certificate year and practice admission, read off the register, not a letterhead.
3. Assemble title first so the valuer prices the interest that exists, not the one recited in a sale agreement.
4. Let the inspection happen: measurement, photographs, boundaries walked against the survey plan, a note of encroachments, tenants and unfinished work.
5. Read the draft against the instruction: valuation date, interest valued, basis, assumptions, and the limits placed on use.
6. Lodge for approval where the purpose demands it, then serve the endorsed report on the desk that acts: lender, revenue officer, acquiring authority or tribunal.
7. Diarise revaluation. Every lender, insurer and auditor keeps its own staleness rule, and none treats a figure as permanent.

Papers the valuer must see

Title first: the certificate of occupancy, the deed plan, the land-rent position, and any encumbrance registered under the Land Registration Act, Cap. 334. On a derivative interest, add the investment certificate and the head title behind it.

Then improvements: approved drawings, the building permit, the occupancy permit where one issued, contract sums and variation orders for recent work, and a plant schedule where machinery is priced too.

Then income, where the property earns: tenancies, rent roll, arrears, service-charge accounts, running costs. Rents nobody recorded become the valuer’s assumption, and assumption is what the other side attacks.

Compensation: the heads the 2001 Regulations pay

Acquisition is where an unapproved figure costs most: the award is built from prescribed heads. The Land (Assessment of the Value of Land for Compensation) Regulations, 2001, made under Cap. 113, take the market value of unexhausted improvements and add four allowances.

Disturbance allowance is land value times the average commercial-bank rate on twelve-month fixed deposits, over the period the money is withheld. Transport allowance is the actual cost of moving twelve tonnes of luggage by rail or road up to twenty kilometres from the point of displacement. Accommodation allowance is market rent of the building for thirty-six months. Loss of profits, where a business is displaced, is assessed net monthly profit for thirty-six months from audited accounts.

Unpaid beyond six months, the award attracts interest at the average commercial-bank lending rate. Check the live text, and whether the assessment needs refreshing.

Illustrative arithmetic: a plot in a road reserve

A 1,200-square-metre residential plot on a granted right of occupancy in a Dar es Salaam suburb falls inside a road reserve. The valuer puts unexhausted improvements (house, wall, borehole) at TZS 180,000,000 and monthly rent at TZS 1,200,000. Nothing trades there, so the profits head is nil.

Accommodation comes to TZS 1,200,000 × 36 = TZS 43,200,000. Transport is the carrier’s quotation for twelve tonnes over twenty kilometres, say TZS 900,000. Disturbance, at an assumed deposit rate of 8 per cent on TZS 180,000,000 for one year, is TZS 14,400,000. The award: 180,000,000 + 43,200,000 + 900,000 + 14,400,000 = TZS 238,500,000.

Revise the improvements to TZS 160,000,000 and disturbance falls to TZS 12,800,000, taking the award to TZS 216,900,000: TZS 21,600,000 off a family that had committed the first number.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation. The deposit rate, the carrier’s quotation and the approved value rest on evidence and on the Chief Valuer’s office.

What a bank and TRA do with the same report

A licensed bank lends against the forced-sale figure rather than the open-market one, then takes its own margin below that. Most accept reports only from valuers on their own panel, within an age limit they set, and require revaluation during a facility, because the Bank of Tanzania expects security carried at a defensible value.

TRA reads the same document for two charges on a transfer. Stamp duty on the conveyance runs under Cap. 189 at 1 per cent of value. Income tax takes a single instalment on the gain under Cap. 332 (10 per cent from a resident, 20 per cent from a non-resident) settled before registration. Both attach to value, not to the figure in the agreement, and an unsupported consideration is simply replaced by a government valuation. Exclusions exist for a private residence and low-value agricultural land; thresholds move by Finance Act, so confirm the live schedule on tra.go.tz.

Rating on the Mainland rests on an approved roll where the authority commissioned one, and on a flat charge where it did not. That roll is itself a valuation product.

Where this file stalls

• A broker’s number written into the sale agreement, then contradicted on referral.
• A practising certificate lapsed in the year printed on the cover.
• A mortgage report recycled for a transfer, or a compensation report for insurance.
• A deed plan at odds with the fence, priced as though it agreed.
• An award published before the schedule behind it was endorsed.
• Compensation assessed years before payment, with no revision and no interest computed.
• A foreign valuer signing on his home qualification, nothing temporary on file.
• A rating assessment resting on a roll never approved.

What has moved

Valuation had rested largely on professional custom until Act No. 7 of 2016 made the register the test and put approval on a statutory footing. The citation has since changed, so a report quoting only the 2016 number is dated rather than wrong.

The working rules shifted twice after it: the Valuation and Valuers (General) Regulations, 2018 at GN No. 136 of 2018, then the Valuers Registration (General) (Amendments) Rules, 2022 at GN No. 659 of 2022. Around them, foreign derivative rights moved to the 2022 investment statute from the 1997 regime, and GN No. 487A of 2025 became the reserved-activity screen. Scale fees, forms and procedure change without an Act: take those from vrb.go.tz.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

The Board owns registration, certificates, admission of practices and discipline. The Chief Valuer owns approval of statutory reports. The Ministry responsible for Lands owns tenure; the Land Registry owns title and encumbrances; the Commission for Lands holds the island equivalent. TRA owns duty, the instalment and rate collection, ZRA the Zanzibar duty. The Bank of Tanzania sets what a lender may carry as security, TIRA regulates the insurer relying on a reinstatement figure, TISEZA owns the derivative right. A tribunal under Cap. 216 owns a disputed number; an advocate owns the conveyance. Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates around those desks. It does not practise law, audit or value property, and issues no approval.

What to confirm before you act

• The signatory’s class and certificate year, taken from the register rather than his letterhead.
• That the practice named on the cover is itself admitted.
• The purpose recorded in the instruction, and whether the receiving desk takes it.
• Whether the Chief Valuer’s approval applies, and who carries the time it takes.
• The interest actually held, and its unexpired term.
• For a non-citizen party, the position under Cap. 113, the 2022 investment statute and the reserved list.
• Mainland or Zanzibar, and which desks that puts into the sequence.
• The live duty and realisation figures at tra.go.tz before signing anything.