The agent forwards a two-page PDF, says the title is clean, and asks when you can transfer the deposit. The document is a list nepokretnosti, and unless you read Montenegrin you have taken the description of it on trust.
Two things about that document are usually misunderstood. It is not a deed — it is a live extract from a register, and it is the register, not the paper, that decides who owns what. And its date is doing more work than its content: an extract pulled a fortnight ago can be accurate on its face and already wrong.
What follows decodes it sheet by sheet, then separates the entries that should stop a purchase from those that are routinely cleared.
What the document is, and who issues it
The list nepokretnosti is defined by Article 53 of the Law on State Survey and Real Property Cadastre (Official Gazette of the Republic of Montenegro 29/2007, as amended, most recently by Official Gazette of Montenegro 160/2025) as the basic document about immovable property and the rights over it. It covers all cadastral parcels belonging to the same rights holder, and the buildings on them, within one cadastral municipality — so a single extract can show far more than the unit you are buying, and a unit you are buying can appear on someone else's.
One point of housekeeping trips up buyers reading older guidance: the register is no longer kept by the Cadastre and State Property Administration. That body was abolished in January 2024 and its cadastral functions passed to the Real Estate Administration (Uprava za nekretnine). Correspondence and powers of attorney naming the old authority are a signal that whoever drafted them has not looked recently.
Two different things are both called "the extract":
- A certified extract — under Article 55, a certified list nepokretnosti and a certified excerpt from it are public documents (javne isprave), which the authority must issue within three days of the request. Where the graphic and numeric parts of the cadastral record are not aligned, the implementing rulebook allows a longer period, and that extension is itself information: the mapped and tabular records for that parcel disagree.
- A free public search on the cadastre's web portals, which is informational — a reasonable first look and no basis for a payment.
Since 10 July 2026 the Real Estate Administration has also issued electronically signed extracts through its own download portal, with the same legal standing as one collected at a counter. Access runs through a Montenegrin ID card and the national eID scheme — which in practice means a foreign buyer cannot self-serve the certified document and will obtain it through a lawyer, a notary or an authorised representative.
The sheets, and what each one is for
Article 53 sets out the structure. The lettering is Cyrillic-order Montenegrin, which is why translated summaries so often lose track of which sheet is which.
| Sheet | Contents | What a buyer checks here |
|---|---|---|
| A list | The land — cadastral parcel number, cadastral municipality, area, use category | That the parcel identifier matches the one in the draft contract, and that the area matches what you were shown. A mismatch between contract and folio is not a typing error to be fixed at signature |
| B list | The holder of rights over the land, and the share held | Whether ownership is 1/1 or fractional. Co-ownership means every co-owner signs; an undisclosed co-owner is the most common reason a completion date slips |
| V list | Buildings and separate parts of buildings, and the holders of ownership over those separate parts | That the apartment exists as a registered separate part with its own entry, not merely as a share of a building. In a new development, absence here usually means the condominium subdivision has not been completed |
| V list, part 1 | Utility lines and the holders of rights over them | Infrastructure crossing the parcel that constrains where you can build |
| G list | Encumbrances, restrictions and certain legal states | Everything that can cost you the property. Read this sheet first |
The printed extract you receive follows the same lettering, with the V sheet accompanied by a sketch of the separate part. Where a building or an apartment appears in the contract but not in the V sheet, you are buying something the register does not yet recognise — a different transaction from the one described to you, and the subject of separate treatment in our note on buying off-plan in Montenegro.
The G list: what stops a purchase, and what clears
Under Article 83, entries in the cadastre are of three kinds: uknjižba (registration of a right), predbilježba (conditional registration, pending later justification) and zabilježba (annotation of a legal fact). Article 98 lists the annotations, and the list runs to well over thirty categories. A handful matter disproportionately.
Litigation annotation (zabilježba spora) — Article 104. This records that proceedings are pending which could affect the registered right. Its effect is the one to understand: under Article 104(2), a final judgment or enforceable decision in the annotated dispute operates against persons who acquired rights over the property after the annotation was applied for. Article 105(3) completes it — when that decision is enforced, the register cancels not only the annotation but every registration requested after the annotation request was filed. Buy over a zabilježba spora and you are not a bystander to someone else's litigation; you are inside its result.
That matters because of how Montenegrin law resolves competing buyers. Ownership of immovable property acquired by legal transaction passes on registration in the cadastre, and where more than one person has contracted for the same property, the one who registers takes it — provided that person was in good faith. An annotation on the G list is published notice. It is precisely the thing that makes good faith unarguable afterwards.
An annotated dispute is deleted ex officio ten years after entry under Article 106, and can be renewed, so age is not evidence that it has gone away.
Prohibition on disposal of an unpermitted building — Article 33 of the Law on Legalization of Unpermitted Buildings (Official Gazette of Montenegro 91/2025, in force 14 August 2025). This is the entry most likely to surprise a buyer of an older coastal house. A building erected without a building act, or contrary to one, cannot be in legal circulation — it cannot be transferred, and no business activity may be carried on in it. The same applies to an unpermitted building that is neither registered in the cadastre nor the subject of a legalization decision. The prohibition is annotated in the G list, and the persons who may request that annotation include the inspectorate, licensing bodies, any person with a legal interest — and the notary asked to draw up the transfer contract.
Two dates follow from that statute and are moving:
- Owners of unpermitted buildings not yet in the cadastre must initiate registration. Parliament has extended that deadline twice, most recently by the amending law published on 7 August 2026 (Official Gazette of Montenegro 117/2026), which runs it to 14 August 2027. The same amendment removed the option of preserving the deadline with an incomplete filing — the survey report of the as-built state and the full supporting file must now accompany the application.
- Separately, Article 51 obliges the cadastre, within 36 months of the law's entry into force, to enter disposal-prohibition annotations against buildings whose G list already carries an annotation of no building permit, no construction notification, no final supervision report, no use permit, or excess over the permit. Properties that currently show only a descriptive annotation are inside the scope of a sweep, not outside it.
Where legalization succeeds, Article 21 requires the cadastre, within forty days of receiving the decision, to record it and delete the unpermitted-construction and disposal-prohibition annotations. That is the route out — but it is a completed procedure, not an undertaking in a contract.
Entries that are ordinarily worked through, not walked away from. A registered mortgage on a developer's parent parcel is normal construction finance; what matters is whether the lender's release is documented and sequenced into completion, a point covered in our property purchase process guide. A predbilježba is a conditional registration with a justification period of thirty to sixty days under Article 97, extendable to a year where a justifying action is brought. An appeal annotation is deleted once the decision becomes enforceable.
Entries that need specialist advice before any money moves: restitution, maritime domain, insolvency, enforcement proceedings, fiduciary transfer of ownership, expropriation, a prohibition on alienation and encumbrance from any source, and an action to delete a registration. None of these are drafting problems.
Why the extract's date beats its content
Article 12 states the priority principle: registration follows the chronological order in which applications are filed, and the legal effect of a registration against third parties begins at the moment the application reaches the authority — not when it is decided. The same article requires the authority to enter the application number and time in the list nepokretnosti immediately on receipt, and to publish the application data on its website.
That changes how you use the document. A current extract shows not only what is registered but what has been applied for and is queued ahead of you. An extract from two weeks ago shows neither, and between the two lies every mortgage, annotation and competing transfer lodged in the interval — each of which outranks you, because your own priority begins only when your application is filed.
The practical consequences:
- Pull the extract on the day of signature, not when the price is agreed. For a decision on a notarial deed with a clausula intabulandi, Article 120 puts the authority under an eight-day deadline in the short procedure, and Article 125 provides that an appeal does not suspend execution of such a registration — so the queue moves.
- Consider a priority annotation. Articles 100 to 102 let the registered holder annotate an intention to sell or mortgage, establishing a priority rank from the moment the application is received. It lasts sixty days for a sale, a year for a mortgage to be created. Where a foreign buyer needs time for funds, apostilles or a power of attorney, this is the instrument that holds the position — and it is the seller who must lodge it, which makes it a term to negotiate before signature rather than a remedy afterwards.
- Treat the gap between signature and registration as the exposed period, and as where the registration and title work belongs.
What the extract will not tell you
The register is presumed accurate under Article 10, and no one is to suffer for relying on it. That presumption is about registered rights. It says nothing about:
- Physical condition, construction quality or compliance with the permit, beyond whatever annotation happens to have been made
- Whether a use permit was ever obtained, unless annotated
- Boundaries on the ground where the graphic and numeric records disagree — the condition the rulebook contemplates when it extends the issuing deadline
- Utility debts, local charges, or occupation by a tenant or family member
- Anything about the counterparty's solvency, or about the enforceability of the contract you are being asked to sign
Nor does it settle whether a private agreement you have already signed binds anyone — a separate question, treated in our notes on reservation and pre-contract review and on what a deposit actually does. For land rather than built property, the parcel-level checks differ again: see our land purchase guide.
A worked reading
Anonymised, and typical of the coastal files that arrive here. The extract shows: A sheet, one parcel, area consistent with the contract. B sheet, two co-owners at 1/2 each — the seller and a sibling, only one of whom has been in the negotiation. V sheet, a building registered, but the apartment not entered as a separate part. G sheet, a bank mortgage, and an annotation that the building was constructed without a use permit.
Nothing there is unusual, and nothing there is fatal. But the transaction as described — buy the apartment from the seller, complete next month — does not exist. There is no apartment in the register to convey, one of two owners has not been consulted, the lender has not been asked for anything, and the use-permit annotation falls in the class Article 51 directs the cadastre to convert into a disposal prohibition. Four sequenced conditions and a different completion date, all of them on the page described as clean.
Before you send the deposit
Ask for the extract in the original, dated within days, and have it read against the draft contract rather than summarised for you. If the parcel number, the ownership shares, the separate-part entry and the G list do not all agree with what you have been told, the discrepancy is the transaction, not a detail in it.
Send us the extract and the draft contract before you sign or transfer anything, and we will tell you what the register actually shows, what has to be cleared, and in what order. Where a deadline is running, our team answers on WhatsApp. Our Montenegro property practice reads the register against the contract before either is signed. Whether a particular annotation can be cleared depends on your documents, not on the general position above.
Statutory provisions, deadlines and administrative arrangements stated as at August 2026. Legalization deadlines have been extended twice and should be confirmed as current before you rely on them.
