The schedule arrives as a clean table. Signature, then a percentage. Foundations, another percentage. Structure topped out, roof closed, façade, handover.
Buyers arriving from the United Kingdom, Ireland or the Gulf read that table through a regime they have lived under at home — a regulator, a stakeholder account, a completion guarantee. Montenegro has no equivalent, and the absence is not a gap in enforcement. It is the position on the statute book. Stage payments generally go straight to the developer's operating account, and the wording of the contract is the main thing standing between you and that reality. General obligations law sits beneath it as a floor, but the contract is where your position is decided.
No statute puts your stage payments beyond the developer's reach
Montenegro rebuilt its construction law in 2025. The Law on Construction (Zakon o izgradnji objekata, Official Gazette of Montenegro 19/25, amended by 92/25, 160/25 and 114/2026) governs permits, supervision, technical inspection and use permits in detail. What it does not do — anywhere in its text — is regulate how a developer takes money from buyers before the building exists. There is no escrow duty, no segregated-account duty, and no rule that pre-sale proceeds must be applied to the project they were collected for.
Nor does the Law on Brokerage in the Sale and Lease of Real Estate (Official Gazette of Montenegro 89/2025) fill the hole. As we set out in our guide to Montenegro property deposits, that law brought licensing, a public register of brokers and professional liability insurance — but no client-money rule. "Held by the agency" describes a commercial arrangement, not a statutory safeguard.
One protected route exists, and it is voluntary. Under Article 68 of the Law on Notaries a notary may take money and securities on deposit, receiving the funds through a bank into a dedicated deposit account rather than in cash. It is available for off-plan instalments — but only if the developer agrees, which makes it a negotiating point rather than a right.
In Montenegro, the contract is the protection.
The permit file is public — read it before you read the schedule
Under Article 31 of the Law on Construction, a building is constructed on the basis of a building permit and building without one is prohibited. The former prijava građenja notification model, under which an investor could begin building by filing a dossier, is gone, as our guide to the Montenegro building permit process explains. (Narrow exemptions were added in 2026 for photovoltaic systems and heat pumps; nothing there touches residential buildings.)
Much of the developer's file is published as a matter of law: the permit application within three days of filing (Article 33), the notification of the start of construction within three days (Article 40), the use-permit application (Article 54), and the use permit itself within three days of issue (Article 59) — failing to publish the last is an offence.
Two provisions repay close reading. Article 34(1)(4) states that the permit is issued on proof of ownership or of another right over the building land — a folio extract, a concession contract, a lease, or a notarised consent of the landowner registered in the G list. The entity selling you an apartment may hold nothing more than a contractual right to build on ground belonging to somebody else. And Article 43 requires the investor to complete construction within five years of the permit being issued, with an annual charge and an obligation to maintain the site if that is overrun.
One thing must not be overstated. Montenegrin law does not make a building permit a precondition of selling. It is a precondition of building. "The permit is in place" is a floor beneath your due diligence, not a protection in itself.
The cadastre will not hold your place the way the brochure implies
Buyers are routinely told their claim will be "noted in the cadastre". The Law on State Survey and Real Estate Cadastre is less accommodating than that phrase suggests.
An object under construction is entered in the G list as an annotation of construction, recording the investor, the technical documentation, the building permit and the deadline for completion of works (Article 65). Read it — that completion deadline is a public fact you can check against what the sales office told you. But note whose annotation it is: the developer's.
Under Article 66, the holder of a right on a special part of a building is the investor, or a person who submits a document proving ownership or establishing legal continuity in relation to the investor. That is the door you eventually walk through, once your unit exists as a registrable object. Until then Article 85 applies: entries may be permitted only against the person currently registered as the holder.
Article 98 sets out what an annotation may record, and a buyer's contractual claim under an off-plan pre-sale contract is not among the listed facts. The instruments that come closest each carry a clock:
- Predbilježba — a conditional entry, available where a document that would normally support full registration is defective, for example where a private deed lacks the express registration consent (Articles 91 and 93). It enters the G list and carries priority (Article 96), and on justification converts into full registration with effect from the date of application (Article 94). But Article 97 gives a justification window of no less than 30 and no more than 60 days, extendable to a maximum of one year only where a justification action is filed.
- Annotation of priority order — requested by the registered right holder, meaning the developer, not you (Article 100), and it lapses after 60 days, or one year where a mortgage is to be established (Article 102).
- Annotation of dispute — available only once proceedings capable of affecting the registered right are already on foot (Article 104).
Set those windows against a build running two to three years and the conclusion is unavoidable: no cadastre entry available to an off-plan buyer spans the construction period. Timing is not a detail of the strategy; it is the strategy.
Sales paperwork and market commentary — including our own earlier guide to the Montenegro reservation agreement and pre-SPA — often use "zabilježba" loosely for any cadastre entry that protects a buyer. Read against Article 98 the term is narrower than that usage suggests. What is actually available is a conditional entry once a registrable document exists, on the clock set by Article 97, and nothing that covers the build from signature to handover.
The lender's mortgage sits above you and does not fall away by itself
Under Article 310 of the Law on Property Relations, a building under construction — and even an individual unit within it, whether or not yet built — can be mortgaged, provided a final building approval has been issued. (That statute uses the older term; the instrument it refers to is the building permit issued under the construction law.) Developers finance projects this way routinely, and the charge is registered against the parent asset long before your unit is carved out of it.
Article 349 explains what happens on enforcement. Where the object of the mortgage is a building under construction, the sale is effected by assigning the right to build under the approval, together with the materials incorporated into the works; the permit is then reissued in the purchaser's name and the purchaser steps by operation of law into the seller's rights and obligations under it. Note what is absent from that chain: your contract with the original developer. It is not extinguished — it remains a claim against the developer — but it does not travel with the building.
Discharge is governed by Article 350. Within eight days of the mortgage terminating, the creditor must draw up and deliver a certificate of termination to the debtor, who applies for deletion on the strength of it; a creditor who fails can be compelled through the court and is liable for the resulting loss. The regional shorthand is a "release consent"; in Montenegro it is this certificate, with this deadline attached.
The point is procedural. Release is an act somebody has to perform. A clause promising that the unit "will be free of encumbrances at handover" is a promise about a future act by a third party — the bank — who has made you no promise at all.
What each instalment actually buys
| Stage | What you legally hold at that moment | What the public record shows | What to try to negotiate before you pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signature / reservation | A contractual claim against the developer only | Nothing in your name | Notarial deposit of the payment; refund triggers for permit or title defects |
| Foundations | The same contractual claim | Construction annotation naming the investor, permit and completion deadline | Payment released against the published start-of-construction notification, not a calendar date |
| Structure and roof | The same contractual claim | Start-of-construction notification published by the state construction inspector | Milestone certified by the supervising engineer — who is appointed and paid by the investor, so provide for your own inspection right alongside it |
| Façade and fit-out | The same contractual claim | Changes requiring a fresh permit decision re-enter the published file | Lender undertaking to release your unit, given to you directly |
| Use permit issued | A registrable position, once the unit exists as a separate object | Use permit published within three days | Retention held back against the defects list |
| Registration | Ownership | Your name in the folio | Deadline and default remedy if the developer stalls on the application |
The stages above are a composite of schedules we see across the market, not any particular project's terms; every schedule differs and yours governs. Nothing in the final column is an entitlement — each exists only if agreed, and a lender undertaking depends on a third party who owes you nothing.
What a buyer in Turkey would already have
Turkey regulates the same transaction directly under the Consumer Protection Law (Law 6502): no pre-paid housing contract may be concluded before the building permit is obtained (Article 40(3)); the seller may not demand payment under any name before a valid contract exists (Article 41(2)); for projects of thirty units or more the seller must provide building completion insurance or another approved security before starting sales, and where that insurance is used its proceeds cannot be drawn into a bankruptcy or liquidation estate, attached, or made subject to interim measures (Article 42); the consumer has fourteen days from the contract date to withdraw without reason or penalty (Article 43); and delivery must occur within forty-eight months of the contract date (Article 44, as amended in 2022). For up to twenty-four months the consumer may rescind without cause — though the seller may then claim statutory costs plus compensation capped at two to eight per cent of the price depending on elapsed time (Article 45).
None of this is law in Montenegro. It is, however, a serviceable checklist of what to ask a Montenegrin developer to accept by contract.
What is realistically negotiable
The following are anonymised, project-agnostic patterns drawn from our transaction practice. They describe tendencies across tiers of counterparty, not any identifiable development, and nothing here is a representation about any particular project or developer.
Bank-financed developers with institutional lenders are the ones most often able to produce a bank guarantee or a written release undertaking from the lender, because the machinery already exists on their side. Smaller counterparties usually cannot, and pressing for it tends to surface how the project is really funded — itself worth knowing. Milestone-linked payments verified against the published record are more widely accepted than guarantees, and cost the developer nothing where the project is on schedule. Retention at handover is sometimes conceded; whether it is at all, and on what release conditions, varies with the counterparty and with how the project is funded. A conditional cadastre entry is best treated as a step taken at the moment a registrable document exists, with the justification window diarised — not a clause signed and forgotten.
A developer who refuses every one of these is not thereby unsound. But the refusals are worth understanding one by one before the next payment, rather than after.
Before the next instalment leaves your account
The checks that matter are documentary and mostly public: the permit file and its published trail, the folio and its G list, the completion deadline in the construction annotation, the charge over the parent parcel and who would have to release it.
On a purchase file we act for the buyer alone and take no instructions from that project's developer or agency. Send us the schedule and the draft contract, and we will tell you what each instalment actually buys, which protections this counterparty is likely to accept, and what the record shows that the brochure does not. Which of these arguments is available to you depends on your documents, not on the general position described here. Our real estate investment practice runs the transaction, and our construction advisory team reads permit files daily — which is what makes the published record usable. If the project sits on the coast, our Tivat real estate market guide is a useful companion.
Statutory positions stated as at August 2026.
