Most articles about Montenegrin building law stop at the assembly. The statute does not. It appoints inspectors, tells them exactly what to check, gives them orders they must issue, and then attaches fines — including to the president of the assembly, to the developer, and to the municipal officer who misses a deadline.
It also contains two provisions that turn ordinary invoices into enforceable instruments, and one that says the developer pays for the building's first year.
Who supervises, and in how many layers
Article 31 sets out four roles.
Supervision over the application of the law and other housing regulations is carried out by the state administration body competent for housing affairs and by the competent local authority. Inspection supervision in housing and building maintenance is carried out by the housing inspector (inspektor za stanovanje). Within the local authority's competences it is carried out by the local authority through the communal inspector. And securing communal order and supervising the regulation made under Article 24(2) — the municipal house rules — is the work of the communal police officer.
So a complaint about noise and a complaint about an unrepaired roof do not go to the same person.
What the housing inspector must check
Article 33 is a checklist, and reading it tells you what the statute actually treats as a breach. The inspector is obliged to check, among other things:
- whether an owner exercising a right of upward extension has removed, at their own expense, defects and damage caused by the works, within 30 days of their occurrence;
- whether that owner, where temporary rehousing was needed, provided the affected owner — with their consent and for the duration of the works — another flat that does not worsen their housing conditions, including the corresponding costs;
- whether that owner restored the premises, devices and installations to their prior state within 10 days of completing the works;
- whether that owner notified the owners at least 30 days before starting the works;
- whether the president of the assembly convenes and chairs sessions and notifies all owners in writing, with the agenda, at least five days before the assembly;
- whether the assembly and/or the manager, or the company entrusted with maintenance, secured regular servicing and safety control of lifts in use;
- whether the manager secured urgent works without delay;
- whether the manager secured urgent works on a special part where the owner did not carry them out;
- whether the local authority secured the urgent works where the manager and assembly did not.
Three of these are cross-references to the Property Law's provisions on upward extension and on the assembly president's duties; the rest sit in the maintenance statute itself, and are examined in urgent works: who decides, who pays and the upravnik.
Article 35 then converts each item into an order the inspector is obliged to issue once a breach is established — including ordering the assembly president to convene sessions with five days' written notice, and ordering the manager to secure urgent works without delay.
The developer pays for the first year
This is the provision new-build buyers should read before they accept their first maintenance invoice.
Article 16(6) departs from the general allocation rule. Exceptionally, the developer of the residential building is obliged to bear alone the costs of regular maintenance, necessary works and urgent works on the building and the urban parcel, to organise the maintenance work, and to take steps to form the building's management organs — for a period of one year from the day ownership of at least one special part is transferred from the developer to a buyer, or from the day that change is registered in the cadastre or another appropriate register of immovable property.
Article 16(7) adds a filing duty: the developer must notify the competent inspection body — the housing inspector — of that first transfer within 15 days of its registration.
So the clock is public, and it is triggered by the first sale in the building, not by your own completion. If you buy the twentieth flat six months after the first one sold, the developer's year is already half spent. The contribution formula that applies afterwards is set out in the point, and the account.
Article 38 backs it: a legal person developer that fails to do those things is punished by a fine of €500 to €10,000.
Two invoices that go straight to enforcement
The statute converts two ordinary-looking documents into enforcement titles.
Article 16(8): the invoice for the amount of maintenance funds owed by unit owners or users is an enforceable instrument in enforcement proceedings.
Article 15: where the manager or the assembly fail to secure urgent works and the local authority carries them out at the building's expense, the invoice for those urgent works is an enforceable instrument as well.
Neither has to be established in litigation first. For an owner with arrears, that is the difference between a demand and a title. Article 16(9) also allows the user rather than the owner to bear those costs where the user assumed the obligation by a contract on mutual rights — so a lease can move the burden, but it does not remove it from the building's books.
Who gets fined, and how much
Article 37 sets the main band. A fine of €500 to €10,000 applies to a legal person that is a unit owner, to a unit owner who is president of the assembly, and to a user of a special or common part, where they, among other things:
- fail to remove without delay defects that cause damage to other special or common parts or call their functioning into question;
- fail to carry out repairs on their own special part at their own expense where that is necessary to prevent damage to another owner's part or to parts serving the building as a whole;
- breach the upward-extension duties listed above — the 30-day repair, the alternative accommodation, the 10-day restoration, the 30-day advance notice;
- fail to form the building's management organs;
- fail to convene and chair assembly sessions with five days' written notice and an agenda to all owners;
- as a co-owner or joint owner of a special part, fail to authorise a representative in the assembly and deliver the authorisation.
Article 38 completes the picture. A natural person is fined €30 to €2,000 for those offences. A legal person developer faces €500 to €10,000 for the one-year duty in Article 16(6); the responsible person in that legal person, €30 to €2,000; an entrepreneur, €150 to €2,000.
And then the layer nobody expects. A fine of €500 to €2,000 applies to the responsible person in a state administration body, a local self-government body or a local authority where that body:
- fails to secure urgent works to the level of remediating the existing state, at the building's expense, when the manager or assembly did not;
- fails to forward the application under Article 19(2) and the register extract to the statistics authority within eight days;
- fails to deliver the act determining the building's registration number and activity code within eight days;
- fails to deliver that act to the applicant within eight days.
The eight-day chain that opens a building's joint account is therefore not advisory. Each step is a fineable duty on a named official.
| Who | For what | Fine |
|---|---|---|
| Legal-person owner, assembly president, user | defects, repairs, extension duties, failing to form organs, no five-day notice | €500–€10,000 |
| Natural person | the same offences | €30–€2,000 |
| Developer (legal person) | failing the one-year duty under Article 16(6) | €500–€10,000 |
| Responsible person in the developer | the same | €30–€2,000 |
| Entrepreneur | the same | €150–€2,000 |
| Responsible official in a state or local body | not doing urgent works; missing the eight-day steps | €500–€2,000 |
What an owner should take from this
- In a new building, ask when the first unit was transferred. The developer's year under Article 16(6) runs from that date, not from yours, and the housing inspector was notified within 15 days.
- Treat an arrears invoice as a title, not a letter. Article 16(8) makes it enforceable.
- If the assembly is never convened, that is a fineable breach. The five-day written notice with an agenda is checked by the inspector under Article 33 and ordered under Article 35.
- If you are a co-heir or co-owner, appoint your representative. Failing to do so is on the Article 37 list.
- Send the right complaint to the right officer. Noise and house rules go to the communal police officer under Article 31; unmaintained common parts go to the housing inspector.
- Lift servicing is inspected. Article 33 names regular lift service and safety control expressly.
Where the building has no manager at all — the situation behind many of these breaches — the statute's answer is a temporary manager, set out in the upravnik. What the assembly must decide, and with what majority, is in how decisions get made.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
The people around a property transaction are mostly paid by the transaction. An agent's commission depends on the sale closing. A developer's sales team works for the developer — and in the first year of a new building, the developer is also the party the statute makes responsible for maintenance.
We take no commission from sellers, developers, agents or intermediaries — not in any form and not on any file. Our only income is the fee you pay us, and it does not increase if you sign. Telling you not to proceed costs us nothing.
In practice that means we check when the first unit in a new building was transferred before accepting that maintenance charges are due from you, we read an arrears invoice as the enforcement title it is, and we address a complaint to the officer who actually has the power. Where a matter requires representation before a Montenegrin authority or court, that work is carried out by an advocate admitted to the Montenegrin Bar, with whom we work on the file.
One boundary, and it is not negotiable: we are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers. We do not give personal advice on financial instruments and we do not tell you whether an asset will make money. What we protect is your legal position — title, contract, registration, status, and the deadlines that decide all four.
If an invoice or an order has arrived
Send us the invoice, the order or the inspector's decision, together with the building's details and the date the first unit was sold if you are in a new development. We will tell you what the document actually is, who is obliged to do what, and what your answer to it should be. If a deadline is already running, say so when you write.
Statutory provisions are stated as at September 2026 and were read from the consolidated text of the Law on the Maintenance of Residential Buildings, Official Gazette of Montenegro 41/2016, 84/2018, 111/2022 (Constitutional Court decision U-I no. 40/20 of 28 July 2022), 140/2022 and 84/2024, together with the cross-referenced provisions of the Law on Property Relations. A draft of a new act on the management and maintenance of residential buildings is in preparation and is not law. This page is general information on a statutory regime, not advice on a specific transaction.
