For Rent: "Cannot Make Changes Outside of Owned Area"

Hello,
I am not sure if this is a bug or me as a player just having some issues on my own end, but I was wondering if anyone else here is having issues with adding/ or moving walls when building a rental unit?

I have no mods or cc installed - never have , and any time when I go to build a rental unit I keep getting this error / warning that says "Cannot Make Changes Outside of Owned Area" . So if I use the room tool and try to build within the box I made , it won't let me. Or if I try to move the walls, I get the same error. I can build boxes all over the place with the room tool, but once it's built I can't do anything more than that.
I did have my landlord sim on the lot as well , and I was trying to upgrade the apartments - but ended giving up out of frustration.

I am trying to do my research on this right now. I also would like to mention that I did go through the tutorials in game and saw nothing that mentioned this.

So is anyone else having this issue? Or am I just being a dumb player right now ? lol.