Somebody is living in the apartment. The seller says it is "just a rental, we will sort it out before completion." You sign, you register, you become the owner — and the tenant stays, on the terms somebody else agreed, for as long as their contract runs.
That is not a failure of the transaction. It is the rule. Article 619 of the Zakon o obligacionim odnosima puts the buyer into the seller's shoes, and article 619(2) blocks the buyer from asking for the property back before the lease period ends.
And there is a second half to this that most English-language material gets wrong: for a typical one- or two-year lease, the register will not tell you the tenant exists.
The core rule, in one article
🔴 Article 619. In the case of alienation of a thing that was previously handed over to another in lease, the acquirer of the thing steps into the place of the lessor, and thereafter the rights and obligations under the lease arise between the acquirer and the tenant.
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The acquirer may not demand that the tenant hand over the thing before the expiry of the period for which the lease was agreed, and if the duration of the lease is determined neither by contract nor by law, then before the expiry of the notice period.
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For the acquirer's obligations under the lease towards the tenant, the transferor is liable as a solidary surety.
Three things follow at once. You inherit the lease whether or not you wanted it. You cannot shorten it by buying. And the seller does not simply walk away: they remain liable alongside you, as a surety, for the obligations owed to that tenant.
Article 620 allocates the money. Unless otherwise agreed, the acquirer is entitled to the rent from the first payment term following the acquisition; if the transferor collected that rent in advance, they must cede it to the acquirer. And from the moment the tenant is notified of the alienation, the tenant may pay only the acquirer. Notifying the tenant is therefore not a courtesy — it is what redirects the money.
Article 622 gives the tenant something in return: where the lessor's rights and obligations pass to an acquirer, the tenant may terminate the contract in any case, observing the statutory notice periods. So the change of owner is an exit door for the tenant, not for you.
The variant that turns on what you knew
There is a second scenario, and it is the one where a buyer's position can actually be better.
🔴 Article 621. Where the thing about which a lease was concluded has been handed over to the acquirer and not to the tenant, the acquirer steps into the lessor's place and assumes their obligations towards the tenant if, at the moment of concluding the alienation contract, they knew of the existence of the lease.
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An acquirer who at that moment did not know of the lease is not obliged to hand the thing over to the tenant, and the tenant may only claim damages from the lessor.
The dividing line between articles 619 and 621 is delivery. If the tenant was already in possession, you take the lease, full stop. If the property was handed to you rather than to the tenant, your knowledge at signature decides it.
Which is why a seller's casual mention of "a tenant who is moving in next month" is not small talk. It is the fact that makes article 621 bite.
Why the register will usually not save you
Montenegro's cadastre does record lease rights. Article 49 of the Zakon o državnom premjeru i katastru nepokretnosti, listing what the cadastre contains, names pravo zakupa — the right of lease — among the burdens and restrictions it holds. So far so reassuring.
Then comes the threshold:
🔴 Article 78. Real and personal servitudes, mortgage, sub-mortgage, lease and concessions for a period longer than five years, the right of pre-emption, and prohibitions on alienation and encumbrance are entered in the G sheet of the list nepokretnosti.
Longer than five years. A one-year Budva rental, a two-year winter let, a three-year corporate tenancy — none of them meets that threshold, and none of them will appear in the G sheet you so carefully read. You can pull a clean extract and still buy a property with someone living in it under a contract that binds you.
English-language guidance circulating on this subject advises registering the lease so that the buyer is deemed to know about it. That advice is not wrong in principle — article 92 permits a predbilježba, a pre-notation, of a lease where the document proves both the existence of the right and the parties' will to have it registered — but it is incomplete in a way that matters, because it omits the five-year condition that decides whether the entry is available at all.
The practical consequence is unglamorous and unavoidable: on this particular risk, the register is not the primary tool. Inspection, the seller's warranties and the contract are.
What the lease you inherited actually says
Once you are the lessor, the statute allocates the burdens. These are the provisions that decide what you now owe.
Article 598. The lessor must keep the thing in proper condition for the duration of the lease and carry out the necessary repairs, and must reimburse the tenant for maintenance costs the lessor should have borne. But 🔴 the costs of minor repairs caused by ordinary use, and the costs of use itself, fall on the tenant. The tenant must notify the lessor of a repair.
Article 599. If necessary repairs impede use substantially and for a longer time, the tenant may terminate; and the tenant is entitled to a reduction of rent proportionate to the restriction.
Article 600. You may not make changes to the leased thing without the tenant's consent if that would impede their use, and where changes reduce their use, the rent reduces proportionately.
Articles 601 to 604. The lessor answers for defects impeding agreed or ordinary use, whether or not they knew of them; minor defects are disregarded. Liability may be excluded by contract — but 🔴 the exclusion clause is null if the lessor knew of the defect and deliberately failed to disclose it, if the defect makes use impossible, or if the lessor imposed the clause using a monopoly position.
Article 605. The tenant must notify you without undue delay of any defect appearing during the lease and of any unforeseen danger threatening the property. A tenant who does not lose their claim for damages and owes you the damage caused.
Article 613. At the end, the tenant returns the thing undamaged — but is not liable for wear resulting from ordinary use, nor for deterioration due to age. Separable additions the tenant made may be removed; you may keep them by paying their value as at the time of return.
The third-party clause that connects to the title
There is one provision in the lease chapter that belongs on every due-diligence list, because it links the tenancy to everything else registered against the property.
🔴 Article 608. Where a third party claims to exercise some right over the leased thing and turns to the tenant, or takes the thing from the tenant by their own authority, the tenant must inform the lessor. If it is established that the third party has a right that entirely excludes the tenant's right to use the thing, the lease is terminated by operation of law, and the lessor must compensate the tenant. Where the third party's right merely limits the tenant's right, the tenant may choose between terminating and a reduction of rent — and in every case is entitled to damages.
If a lifetime habitation right or usufruct is registered against the flat you just bought and let, that entry is a third party's right for the purposes of article 608 — and the compensation runs from you.
Subletting: allowed by default
Article 614. Unless otherwise agreed, the tenant may sublet the leased thing or otherwise hand it over for use — but only where this causes no harm to the lessor. The tenant guarantees to the lessor that the subtenant will use the thing in accordance with the lease.
Read that as a drafting instruction. If you do not want your Budva flat re-let on a nightly basis, the lease has to say so, because silence permits it.
Where consent is required, article 615 allows you to refuse it only for justified reasons. Article 616 lets you terminate for a sublease made without a required consent. And 🔴 article 617 gives you a direct route to money: to collect your claims against the tenant arising from the lease, you may demand payment directly from the subtenant of the amounts the subtenant owes your tenant. Article 618 ends the sublease whenever the lease ends.
Non-payment, and the two different clocks
This is where the residential and the general regimes separate, and where getting the wrong clock costs a quarter of a year.
Article 612 — the general rule. The lessor may terminate if the tenant does not pay the rent within 15 days after the lessor has called upon them to pay. The contract stays in force if the tenant pays the amount due before the termination is communicated to them.
🔴 Article 631 — the residential lease. The lessor may terminate a residential lease without giving a notice period if the tenant fails to pay the rent for two consecutive terms. Exceptionally, the contract remains in force if the tenant pays before the termination is communicated, or if at that moment they hold a claim against the lessor meeting the conditions for statutory set-off.
The set-off proviso is easy to overlook and is precisely what a tenant who has paid for repairs under article 598 will reach for.
Ending a lease you did not choose
Article 623. A lease concluded for a fixed period ends by the mere lapse of that period.
🔴 Article 624 — tacit renewal. If, after the agreed period expires, the tenant continues to use the thing and the lessor does not object, a new lease is deemed concluded — of indefinite duration, on the same terms as the previous one. And securities given by third parties for the first lease expire with the lapse of the original period. Silence at the end of a term is therefore an act: it converts a fixed lease into an open-ended one and drops the guarantees.
The notice periods then differ by regime, and the difference is large:
- Article 625 — general. Where duration is neither determined nor determinable, either party may terminate by notice; if the length is not fixed by contract, law or local custom, it is eight days, and notice may not be given at an untimely moment. Where the leased things are dangerous to health, the tenant may terminate without any notice period, even if they knew of that at conclusion — and 🔴 cannot waive this right.
- 🔴 Article 634 — residential. Where duration is neither determined nor determinable, either party may terminate by notice; if the contract does not fix the length, it is three months.
- 🔴 Articles 651 and 652 — business premises. An indefinite lease of business premises cannot end by notice before six months have passed from conclusion, unless the contract says otherwise. The notice period is that fixed by contract; failing that, three months — and unless otherwise agreed, notice may be given only on the first or the fifteenth day of the month. Article 653 requires the notice to be written and delivered by registered post or in person.
Article 610 is the exception that cuts through all of them: if, even after the lessor's warning, the tenant uses the thing contrary to the contract or its purpose or neglects its maintenance, and there is a danger of substantial damage, the lessor may terminate without giving any notice period.
For business premises, article 654 adds three grounds on which the lessor may terminate at any time regardless of duration clauses: contrary use or substantial damage after a written warning; failure to pay due rent within fifteen days of a written warning; and the lessor being unable, for reasons outside their responsibility, to use the premises where they conducted their business and therefore intending to use the premises the tenant holds.
Form, and the clause that voids the contract
🔴 Article 629. A residential lease must be concluded in written form and certified in accordance with the regulations. A contract concluded contrary to that is null. The same article adds that the residential lease also governs the parties' mutual relations in the management of the residential building.
🔴 Article 639 imposes the same discipline on business premises: written form, certified by the competent authority, on pain of nullity. And article 640 resolves the collision: where two or more tenants separately conclude leases over the same business premises, the right to the lease belongs to the one who concluded first.
Article 630 then makes the general lease provisions apply to residential leases in addition, which is why the two chapters must be read together rather than in the alternative.
One boundary must be kept in view throughout. Article 596 provides that the general lease chapter does not apply to leases regulated by special regulations — so where a separate statute governs a particular kind of lease, that statute comes first.
Death, destruction, and the six-month window
Article 627 and 🔴 article 635 both continue the lease with the heirs of a deceased tenant or lessor unless otherwise agreed. Article 635 adds a window that only exists for residential leases: the tenant's heirs may terminate before the agreed period expires, within six months of the death, observing the notice period.
Article 626 ends the lease where the thing is destroyed by force majeure; where it is partly destroyed or merely damaged, the tenant may terminate or stay and demand a corresponding rent reduction.
When somebody is in the flat with no basis at all
Not everyone in a Montenegrin apartment is a tenant. For the person who simply moved in, or whose basis has come to an end, the statute provides its own route:
🔴 Article 636. If a person moves into the separate or common parts of a residential building without a legal basis, or that basis ceases, any person with a legal interest may request their eviction from the local administration authority. The procedure for eviction is urgent.
Note what the provision says and does not say. It routes this to the local administration authority, not to a court, and it marks the procedure urgent. It is a different track from terminating a lease, and it applies where there is no lease to terminate.
What to do before you sign
- Ask, in writing, whether the property is let, on what terms, and since when — and get the answer into the contract as a warranty. Article 619 makes this the single most consequential question after title itself.
- Read the G sheet, but do not rely on its silence. Article 78 registers a lease only above five years; below that, absence of an entry proves nothing.
- Establish whether the tenant is already in possession. That is the fact that separates article 619 from article 621, and article 621 turns on what you knew at signature.
- If a tenant is in place, get the lease itself, and check its form against article 629 — an uncertified residential lease is null, which changes the whole conversation.
- Check whether the fixed term has already lapsed with the tenant still in occupation. Article 624 may have converted it into an indefinite lease on the same terms, with the third-party securities gone.
- Work out which notice clock applies: eight days, three months, or six months plus the first-or-fifteenth rule. They are not interchangeable.
- Ask the seller for the rent already collected in advance. Article 620 obliges them to cede it, and it is easier to raise before completion than after.
- Notify the tenant of the transfer. Until you do, article 620 lets them keep paying the seller.
On the neighbouring frameworks: usufruct and lifetime habitation rights on the title, co-ownership shares and forced division, and, for the arrears you may inherit, limitation periods for claims.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
RoNa Legal DOO works for owners and buyers, not for developers, agents or sellers. We are paid by the client we act for and by nobody else in the transaction: no commissions, no referral fees, no share in the contract we are reviewing.
Work that requires representation before a Montenegrin court or state authority is carried out by an advocate admitted to the Montenegrin Bar. Our role is the preparatory and advisory layer: asking the occupancy question in a form that produces a usable answer, reading the lease against the chapter that governs it, working out which notice clock applies, and putting the right warranties into the purchase contract before it is signed.
If there is somebody living in the property you are buying
Send us the lease, the date the tenant took possession, the rent payment record including anything paid in advance, and the list nepokretnosti. From those, the first answer — whether you are bound, for how long, and what you can and cannot do about it — comes quickly.
