It is one of the most common queries we get after completion, and it usually arrives with the assumption that something has gone wrong at the cadastre. Frequently nothing has. There is a provision that says so in terms, and it is not the one anybody looks at.
Article numbers below are from the consolidated Zakon o državnom premjeru i katastru nepokretnosti — "Službeni list RCG" 029/07 of 25.05.2007, then "Službeni list CG" 073/10, 032/11, 040/11, 043/15, 037/17 (twice), 017/18, 084/24 of 06.09.2024 and 160/25 of 30.12.2025 — read on 5 September 2026. General information, not advice on a specific transaction.
The provision that answers the square-metre question
Article 137(4) states it without qualification: a difference in the data relating to the areas of a separate part of a building, arising from the use of different standards for calculating areas, is not regarded as a change.
Its neighbour does the same job for land. Article 137(3): a difference in the data relating to the area of a parcel or of a building, arising in the process of converting an existing analogue cadastral plan into digital form, is not regarded as a change, provided it is within the existing boundaries.
Both provisions sit inside the article governing maintenance of the cadastre, and that is the point. "Change" is a defined operational concept in this statute: it triggers the reporting duty, the surveying work and the update procedure. Saying that a standards-driven area difference is not a change means there is no cadastral procedure to start, no elaborat to commission and nothing for the authority to correct.
One thing Article 137(4) does not do, and it needs saying plainly. It answers the administrative question, not the commercial one. Whether a buyer who contracted for one figure and received another has a claim against the seller or developer is a question for the contract and the law of obligations. Article 137(4) means the cadastre is not obliged to change its entry; it does not decide who bears the difference in price.
What the statute does treat as a change
Article 137(1) lists the changes that are established and carried into the database in the maintenance procedure:
- renewal of destroyed markers of geodetic control points, or their supplementation for detail surveying;
- division and merger of cadastral parcels;
- construction, reconstruction and demolition of buildings;
- change in the manner of land use;
- installation or construction of new utility lines, and reconstruction or cessation of use of existing ones;
- change or supplementation of house numbers, street and square names, and change of the boundaries of spatial units;
- parcelation.
Article 137(2) adds work done in the maintenance procedure on the right-holder's request: marking out the boundaries of cadastral parcels, identification of a cadastral parcel, marking a utility line, expert survey and other work.
Article 137(5) allocates the technical work: items 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the list, and the on-request work, are performed by a geodetic organisation employing at least one qualified surveyor authorised to carry it out. Article 137(6) leaves items 4 and 6 to the administrative authority.
The 30-day duty, and who pays for it
Article 138(1) places the obligation on the right-holder or the investor: to report the change to the authority within 30 days of the day the change arose. Article 138(2) requires the report to be accompanied by the document that forms the basis for registering the change, and by the documents from which the changes can be established. Article 138(3) puts it on a form prescribed by the Ministry. And Article 138(4) settles the cost question in one line: the costs of establishing and carrying through the changes are borne by the right-holder.
Article 140 then puts a matching deadline on the surveyor: the geodetic organisation must, within 30 days of the report being filed, establish the change and deliver to the authority the elaborat of original field data on the work carried out, or the record of the inspection carried out in the parcel boundary-marking and identification procedure.
The deadlines in this part of the statute are short and they run against different people:
| Provision | Who | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Art. 138(1) | Right-holder or investor | Report the change within 30 days of the day it arose |
| Art. 140 | Geodetic organisation | Deliver the elaborat within 30 days of the report being filed |
| Art. 139(1) | Right-holder | Report utility construction, reconstruction or change within two days |
| Art. 137(7) | Administrative authority | Transfer the parcelation plan to the cadastral plans within 30 days of delivery of the planning document |
| Art. 122(2) | Administrative authority | Decide a registration request within 15 days of receipt |
Utilities run on a much shorter clock. Article 139(1) requires the right-holder to report construction or reconstruction of utility lines, or a change to existing ones, within two days. Article 139(2) adds a rule that decides site disputes: underground utility lines must not be covered over before they have been geodetically surveyed. Article 139(3) allows the permit for use of the lines to be issued where the investor also submits the authority's confirmation that the survey was carried out in accordance with the law.
For a buyer, the practical reading of Article 138 is that an unreported change is not a hidden defect of the property so much as an unperformed statutory duty sitting with whoever held the right when it arose — and, under Article 138(4), an unbudgeted cost.
What "etažna svojina" actually registers
Article 77(1) describes the entry: the right of etažna svojina is registered in the names of the owners of the separate parts of a building — flat, business premises, garage, cellar, garage space — together with their right of co-ownership in the common parts of the building that can constitute an independent object of the right of ownership, and in the land on which the building was erected.
That is three things in one entry, and buyers routinely check only the first. The unit, the share in the common parts, and the share in the land travel together.
Article 77(2) locates the land share: the co-ownership right of the unit owners is registered on that part of the urban plot which belonged to the investor, in accordance with the contract or other basis for acquiring ownership. Article 77(3) deals with several residential-commercial buildings on one urban plot: the co-ownership of the owners of one building is also registered on the part of the plot serving those owners. Article 77(4) applies the same rule where part of the plot serves the owners of several buildings.
Article 77(5) is the one to check against the developer: the investor is obliged, together with the request to register the residential-commercial building, to submit the appropriate planning documentation containing the boundaries of the land of the urban plot on which the building was built. Where a completed development shows units registered but the land layer unclear, that provision is the starting point for asking why.
Article 78 then lists what else is registered against immovable property: real and personal servitudes, mortgage and sub-mortgage, lease and concessions for a period longer than five years, and rights of pre-emption among others. The five-year threshold for leases is worth noting on its own — a shorter lease is not registered, and therefore will not be found by reading the sheet.
Two entries that tell you the unit is not finished business
Article 65 requires a building under construction to be entered in the G list as an annotation of construction on the parcel where building has started, containing data on the investor, the technical documentation, the building permit, the deadline for completing the works and other facts of significance for the annotation. For an off-plan unit that annotation is the primary public record of the project, and its contents — particularly the permit reference and the completion deadline — are checkable before signing.
Article 66 then answers who is treated as the holder of the right to a separate part before the units are transferred: the investor, or the person who submits a document proving ownership or establishing legal continuity with the investor. A unit whose sheet still shows the investor is not necessarily anomalous; it is the statutory default until a document moves it.
Article 36 produces the entry buyers should treat as a stop. Where, despite the steps prescribed by law and the evidentiary procedure carried out, it is not possible to mark the boundaries of the property — expressly including the separate parts of a residential-commercial building — or to establish the identity of the right-holder, the authority registers the property to the holder previously registered for whom a legal basis exists, and enters an annotation that the property is unmarked. The same article makes the right-holder bear the cost where they fail to mark the boundaries with visible and permanent markers, or mark them incorrectly, and the surveyor does it instead.
An annotation of an unmarked property is not a formality. It records that the extent of what is being sold could not be established by the procedure designed to establish it.
Subdivision is not always available
Article 137(8) limits parcelation in a way that surprises buyers who plan to split a plot after purchase: parcelation of cadastral parcels lying within the scope of a planning document is permitted only if those parcels have not been put to their designated purpose and no buildings have been erected on them.
Article 137(7) puts a duty on the other side: the authority must transfer the parcelation plan established by a planning document onto the cadastral plans within 30 days of the planning document being delivered.
Read together, the sequence matters more than the intention. A plot inside a planning document that has already been developed is not a candidate for subdivision under Article 137(8), whatever the commercial plan was at purchase.
Where this leaves a purchase
The registration request itself is governed by Article 122. Under Article 122(1) it is granted where the cadastre data disclose no obstacle, the request corresponds to the content of the submitted document, and the document satisfies the conditions by type, form and content — and under Article 122(2) the authority must decide within 15 days of receiving it.
So the order of questions on a unit purchase is: does the entry cover all three elements of Article 77(1); did the investor comply with Article 77(5) on the land; is there an unreported Article 137(1) change with an Article 138(1) duty attached to it; and is the area discrepancy one that Article 137(3) or 137(4) removes from the "change" category altogether. Where the entry itself is wrong rather than merely incomplete, the routes and the deadlines are different, and we set them out in a wrong register entry: three routes, three clocks.
Before you accept the handover
If you are buying a unit, taking over a completed development, or trying to work out whether a square-metre discrepancy is a problem, send us the list nepokretnosti for the unit, the sale contract with its area figures, and the developer's registration documentation. We will check whether the Article 77(1) entry actually carries the common parts and the land, whether Article 77(5) was complied with, whether any Article 137(1) change remains unreported under Article 138(1), and whether the area difference is one the statute already treats as no change at all. How to read the sheet is in the list nepokretnosti check, the building-permit dimension in illegal construction and legalizacija, and how we run these files sits with our title cancellation and registration practice.
