Kinshasa, May 29th, 2025 (CPA).-consulting a lawyer has been recommended to buyers of real estate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to guarantee their security, the CPA learned Thursday in an interview.
« Speaking of real estate, which is property that cannot be moved, I recommend that buyers use lawyers to guarantee their security,’« said Jean Katambwe, a lawyer at the Kwilu bar.
There are certain realities that require recourse to an expert to be able to unearth hidden realities, because these can only be discovered by having a legal eye, pointing out that a lawyer is in the best position to discover whether a property has been mortgaged, because there are crooked sellers who know that they have mortgaged their plots, but they allow themselves to sell them, which cannot be discovered without a legal eye, before explaining what is meant by mortgaged.
‘It’s important to explain what is meant by a mortgage, the fact that a person borrows money by pledging their plot as collateral, so it has been mortgaged. But it’s sometimes difficult to understand that a property has been mortgaged, which is why you need a lawyer, because they have that ability to find out,’ he added, while giving some advice before completing the purchase.
<< We provide a number of tips to enable anyone to buy real estate safely in the DRC. Apart from having a lawyer to ensure that the procedure is regular, with the advantages listed above, it is important to carry out a thorough check of the legal history of the plot, which will make it possible to know whether the seller of the plot or building is really the owner, because it sometimes happens that a person presents himself as the owner, sells the property before disappearing into thin air, and the buyer suffers as a result. In his view, there are two appropriate places to take a history: at district level, where the head of the district plays an advisory role in the process as a decentralized department of the commune, while also holding certain information on the history and legal situation of the building or buildings within his jurisdiction. For Jean Katambwe, the history can also be taken by the registrar of real estate titles, as he is a public officer appointed by the State to ensure the legal security of real estate transactions by guaranteeing the accuracy of information relating to the ownership of real estate, he added, indicating that the registrar is also better placed to take the history in order to know whether the seller is the owner of the property he is selling or not.
According to Mr Katambwe, the buyer should also negotiate protective clauses in the contract, such as guarantees and recourse in the event of disputes, when buying a plot of land, while requiring the seller to guarantee arbitration clauses, i.e. the seller must guarantee the buyer that, should the plot of land present problems, the buyer will have the possibility of returning to him, which will be a major factor if the buyer goes to court to win his case. He also said that it was almost essential for the buyer to go to the notary to have the legal documents authenticated, so that they would have probative value in the event of a dispute, and also to contact the Ministry in charge of Urban Planning and Housing and Land Affairs, to prevent the property from being appropriated from the public domain, as State property cannot be sold and cannot be appropriated.
It is through these ministries that we will know whether these sites have been subdivided, because you should only buy where the State has subdivided or parceled out’, he concluded. CPA/