Almost every buyer I speak to can tell me, in detail, what was in the purchase contract. Very few can tell me what was in the piece of paper they signed weeks earlier, at the start, usually on a phone, sometimes before they had seen the apartment at all.
That earlier document is the mediation agreement with the agency. It is signed at the point of least information in the entire transaction — before anyone has looked at the register, before the price is agreed, before a lawyer is anywhere near the file. And unlike the purchase contract, nobody suggests you have it read first, because at that stage there is nothing yet that feels like a transaction.
This piece is about that document, and about a change in Montenegrin law that most of the advice online still predates.
The regime changed in August 2025
Real estate mediation in Montenegro is now a regulated, licensed activity. The Zakon o posredovanju u prometu i zakupu nepokretnosti — the Law on Mediation in the Sale and Lease of Real Property — was adopted by Parliament on 30 July 2025, published in Službeni list CG 89/2025 on 5 August 2025, and entered into force on 13 August 2025.
That date matters more than it looks. A great deal of the English-language guidance about buying in Montenegro was written before it, and describes a market in which anyone could act as an agent. Among the things the law introduces are licensing of mediators, a professional examination for agents, and a register of authorised agencies.
The practical consequence for a buyer is small to describe and large in effect: "is this agency licensed, and is it on the register?" is now a question with an answer. A year ago it was a matter of impression.
What the document itself has to be
Two features of the new regime are worth knowing before you sign anything.
The mediation contract is concluded in written or electronic form — electronic in line with the law governing electronic commerce. A conversation, a handshake at a viewing, or a "just sign here so we can show you the place" is not the shape the law contemplates.
And the agency's general business conditions are required to set out, among other things, the amount of the mediation fee or the method by which it is determined, a description of the work the mediator has to perform, and the type and amount of costs charged for additional services.
Read that list again as a buyer rather than as a lawyer. It means you are entitled to see, in advance and in writing, what you are paying, what you are getting for it, and what will be billed on top. Those three questions are exactly the ones that turn awkward later, and the law now puts the answers on the agency's side of the table before you commit.
| Ask for this, before signing | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| The agency's licence and its entry on the register | Whether you are dealing with a regulated business or a person with a phone |
| The general business conditions | The fee or how it is calculated, the scope of work, and the cost of "extras" |
| The mediation contract itself, in writing | What you are actually bound to, and for how long |
| A written answer on when the fee becomes payable | The single most common source of later dispute |
What I could not verify today, and won't pretend to
I want to be straight about the limits of this article, because the alternative is to write article numbers that sound authoritative and might be wrong.
I could not open the official text of the law today. The Službeni list record returned a 403 and the mirror I normally use returned a 404. So the gazette reference and the dates above are solid and independently corroborated, and the features I have described are consistent across Montenegrin sources — but I am not going to cite article numbers for them, and I am not going to state rules on three questions that matter a great deal:
- whether and how exclusive mediation may be agreed, for how long, and what happens if you buy through someone else during that period;
- exactly when the agency earns its fee — on introducing you, on a signed preliminary contract, or on completion;
- whether an agency may act for both the buyer and the seller in the same transaction, and what it must disclose if it does.
Every one of those is answerable from the text, and every one of them should be answered for your specific agreement rather than in general. So the useful thing I can give you is not a summary. It is the three questions, in writing, before you sign:
- Under this agreement, at what precise moment do you become entitled to your fee?
- Is this exclusive, and if so for how long, and what am I prevented from doing during that period?
- Are you also acting for the seller in this transaction, and how is your fee split?
An agency operating properly under the new regime will answer all three without difficulty, because the answers are supposed to be in its general conditions already. An evasive answer to question one is worth more information than any brochure.
The three sentences that decide everything
Agency forms are short, and almost all of the risk in them sits in three clauses. If you read nothing else, read these.
The trigger. Somewhere there is a sentence describing the moment the agency becomes entitled to be paid. It might attach to introducing you to the property, to a signed preliminary agreement, or to completion. These are very different worlds. Under the first, walking away from a deal that collapsed for reasons that had nothing to do with you can still leave a fee owing. Under the last, the agency carries that risk instead. Nothing else in the document moves as much money as this one sentence.
The exclusivity and its clock. If the arrangement is exclusive, there will be a period attached, and there will be something you are not permitted to do during it — typically buying the same property, or buying at all in that area, through anyone else. The clause is often reasonable. What makes it expensive is not knowing it is there, and discovering it after you have found something better through a different agency.
The additional services. The new regime requires the general conditions to state the type and amount of costs for additional services. In practice this is where document handling, translation coordination, administrative errands and similar items live. It is entirely legitimate to charge for them. It is not legitimate for them to be a surprise, and the law is now on your side of that argument.
If a form is presented to you with any of these three left vague — a fee "as customary", a period "as agreed", costs "as incurred" — that vagueness is not an oversight to be tidied up later. It is the term.
A free diligence step that did not exist before
There is one thing the 2025 regime hands you that costs nothing at all: a register.
Because mediation is now licensed and authorised agencies are registered, asking for a licence and a register entry is a legitimate, ordinary request, and it can be made in a single message before any money or commitment is involved. It does not tell you whether an agency is good. It tells you whether it is inside the regulated perimeter — which determines what obligations it carries and what recourse exists if things go wrong.
Foreign buyers routinely skip this because it feels rude. It is not rude. It is the cheapest question in the entire transaction, and in a market that only became licensed in August 2025 it is also the newest.
Why the timing is the whole problem
A word about structure rather than about anyone's conduct.
An agency is paid when a transaction completes, and in many Montenegrin sales the fee comes from the seller's side. That is lawful, ordinary, and usually disclosed. It also fixes what the job is: bring the parties to signature. Nobody in that arrangement is being paid to tell you that the building's paperwork is incomplete, that the person on the title died three years ago, or that the structure was extended without permission.
None of that makes an agent an adversary. It makes them a participant with a defined role — and it means the questions that fall outside that role have no owner unless you give them one.
The awkward part is the sequence. The agency form is signed first, when you have the least information and the least leverage; the contract that everyone worries about is signed last, when the momentum is hardest to stop. If you are only going to have one document read by someone whose fee does not depend on the sale closing, most people choose the wrong one.
The arithmetic, expressed differently
Agency fees in a property transaction are conventionally expressed as a percentage of the purchase price. I am not going to quote a market figure, because it varies and because a number in an article becomes a licence to stop asking.
Do this instead. Take whatever percentage your agreement names, apply it to the price you are contemplating, and write the euro amount down. Now compare it to the cost of having that same agreement — one or two pages — read before you sign it, by someone who is not paid out of the transaction. The comparison is not close, and it does not need my numbers to make the point.
And if the plan is to argue about it afterwards: under Montenegro's advocates' tariff, the legal costs a court awards are set by that tariff and are not tied to what you actually paid your own lawyer. Winning is not the same as being made whole.
What to send, and when
The right moment is the one that feels too early. If an agency has sent you a form to sign — before the viewing, before the offer, before anything feels real — that is the document worth reading, and it takes very little time.
Send the mediation agreement and the agency's general business conditions, and say which town you are looking in and roughly what price range. That is enough to tell you what you are committing to and what to ask before you commit.
RoNa Legal advises foreign clients on Montenegrin law; representation before Montenegrin authorities and courts is conducted together with advocates entered in the register of the Bar Association of Montenegro. We don't take commission from sellers, agents or developers on property transactions — our fee is for the review, which is the only arrangement under which a review can tell you to walk away. See our services or reach us through contact. For who is licensed to do what in this market, read what a Montenegro investment advisor can and cannot do; if you will be signing from abroad, start with the power of attorney rules.
