Somewhere between the viewing and the notary, a piece of paper appears. It is usually called an ugovor o posredovanju — a brokerage contract — and it is often presented as a formality to be signed on the spot so that the viewing can be arranged, or the price negotiated, or the unit held.
Until recently there was very little law behind that piece of paper. That changed in 2025.
This page is not about whether agents are trustworthy; most of the ones we deal with are professionals doing an ordinary job. It is about something narrower and more useful: which rulebook now applies to the document in front of you, and how to check that the person asking for your signature is inside it.
What governed brokerage before, in the state's own words
The Ministry of Economic Development and Tourism set out the position plainly in the regulatory impact assessment that accompanied the bill. Before the new law, the relationship between the parties to a brokerage was, in its words, largely confined to the general Law on Obligations, the Law on Prevention of Illegal Business and the Law on Business Organisations. There was no dedicated statute saying who may broker property and on what conditions.
The same document lists the consequences the Ministry itself identified. It is an unusually candid list, and worth reading as the reason the law exists:
- a high share of the grey economy in brokerage work;
- no professional liability insurance;
- no required qualification for the person doing the brokering;
- no obligation on brokers to show all the documentation relating to a property, or to keep copies of it;
- brokerage contracts rarely concluded in practice;
- contracts that do not contain all the necessary elements, nor the broker's obligations and liability;
- commissions often paid in cash rather than through accounts, which undermines control of money flows and taxation;
- no adequate state data on the transactions actually brokered.
If you have bought property in Montenegro before and recognised something in that list, that is the point. The law was written against it.
The law that now applies
The Zakon o posredovanju u prometu i zakupu nepokretnosti — the Law on Brokerage in the Sale and Lease of Real Estate — was adopted on 30 July 2025 and published in the Official Gazette of Montenegro no. 89/2025 of 5 August 2025, entering into force on 13 August 2025. Implementing regulations dealing with the professional examination followed from the Ministry in March 2026.
The architecture the Ministry built the statute around is visible from the draft it published and from the impact assessment. It runs, subject by subject, like this:
Getting into the market at all. A register of brokers, with conditions for entry, the data recorded in it, public inspection of it, rules for changing entries and for deletion. A professional examination. A prohibition on unauthorised brokering. A contract of insurance against liability for damage. Requirements for business premises.
The contract itself. Its definition, its form and content, and its duration. Then the broker's obligations, a standard of due care, general terms of business, and an obligation to keep records of brokerage performed.
How the property is presented and sold. Rules on advertising. The authority to conclude the sale contract. The right to a brokerage fee, and the client's obligations. A provision on the nullity of an obligation to enter negotiations. Exclusive agency. Termination and cancellation of the brokerage contract. Sub-brokerage. Deposit.
Enforcement. Inspection supervision, offences and protective measures, with transitional deadlines for existing businesses to bring themselves into line.
Read that list next to the Ministry's list of problems and the design is obvious: almost every line is an answer to a specific complaint.
An honest limit, and why it matters to you
Here this page has to be careful, and we would rather say so than paper over it.
We could not obtain the enacted text of Law 89/2025 from any public source, and so this page cites no article numbers. That is not for want of looking. On the day of writing, the Official Gazette's own record for the law returned a 404; the two commercial databases that usually carry Montenegrin statutes returned 404 as well, one of them displaying a notice that its content has not been updated since 31 March 2021 and that it is withdrawing from the Montenegrin market; and the Ministry's own published bill is a scanned PDF with no text layer, so it cannot be read or searched by machine. What is publicly readable in text form is the Ministry's first draft and its impact assessment — useful for architecture, but not a safe basis for quoting provisions of a law that was then debated and adopted.
So the description above is the shape of the regime, taken from government documents. The enacted text may differ in detail, and anyone telling you confidently what "Article 12" of this law says should be asked where they read it.
That limit is not merely academic. It is the practical reason the checks below are framed as things to ask for rather than as rights we assert on your behalf.
What to ask before you sign
None of this requires you to become an expert in the statute. It requires the counterparty to show that they are inside the system the statute creates.
| What to ask for | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| The agency's entry in the register of brokers | Registration is the gateway the law creates; an agency inside the register has met its entry conditions |
| Proof of professional liability insurance | The absence of it was one of the Ministry's named problems; it is what stands behind a claim if something goes wrong |
| Evidence that the person handling your file has passed the professional examination | The qualification requirement is new; the exam regulations were issued in March 2026 |
| The written brokerage contract, in advance and unsigned | The law regulates the contract's form and content; reading it the day before costs nothing |
| A clear statement of when the fee becomes payable | Entitlement to the fee is a regulated subject, and "when is it earned" is the question that produces most disputes |
| Whether the mandate is exclusive, and for how long | Exclusivity and duration are separate regulated subjects; both belong in writing |
| That payment runs through an account, not cash | Cash commission was specifically identified by the Ministry as a control and taxation problem |
| The property documentation, and copies you may keep | The absence of any duty to show and retain documents was another of the named problems |
If an agency cannot answer the first three questions, that is information. It is not an accusation, and you do not need to make it one — you can simply take the file to someone who can.
Five subjects that belong in your copy, by name
Five of the regulated subjects are easy to miss because they rarely come up in the conversation, and each of them can decide who carries a loss.
General terms of business. The regime treats an agency's general terms as a distinct subject. In practice that means the two-page contract you are handed may incorporate a longer document you have not been shown. If the contract refers to general terms, ask for them; a term you never saw is still a term you signed up to.
Records of brokerage performed. The Ministry's complaint was that brokers had no duty to show the documentation relating to a property, or to keep copies. The regime answers it with an obligation to keep records. For you the practical value is simple: ask which documents the agency holds on the unit, and ask for copies you may keep. A file that exists is a file that can be produced later.
Sub-brokerage. A separate subject again. It is common for one agency to hold the mandate and another to introduce the buyer, and the arrangement is invisible from the outside. Ask whether anyone else is involved in your transaction and on what basis, because it affects who owes you duties and who is entitled to be paid.
Deposit. Money held by an agency is its own regulated subject. If you are asked to pay anything before the notary — a reservation amount, a holding sum, a deposit against the price — the questions are who holds it, on what account, on what terms it is returned, and whether it is characterised as a deposit under the brokerage arrangement or as a kapara under the sale. Those are different instruments with different consequences, and the paperwork should say which one you are paying.
Advertising. Finally, the listing that brought you to the property is itself a regulated subject rather than pure marketing. That is worth knowing if the unit as described and the unit as found do not match.
What the brokerage law does not do
It is worth being clear about the boundary, because a good brokerage contract is not a substitute for the parts of the transaction that sit elsewhere.
The brokerage law governs the relationship between you and the agency. It does not change how ownership passes. In Montenegro a contract transferring ownership of real property must be concluded in the form of a notarial record, and a transaction that is not in that form produces no legal effect. Ownership itself is acquired by registration in the cadastre, and priority between competing applicants runs from the moment an application is filed, not from the moment a contract is signed.
Nor does it change where a dispute about the property is decided. Under Montenegro's private international law, the courts of Montenegro have exclusive jurisdiction in proceedings whose object is a right in rem in real property situated there, and a foreign judgment in such a matter would be refused recognition. A jurisdiction clause in a brokerage contract cannot move a title dispute abroad.
We set out the title-side checks in how to read a Montenegrin title extract and the completion-day mechanics in what the notary verifies, and what nobody checks.
Before you sign
If a brokerage contract, a reservation form or a draft preliminary contract is in front of you, send it before you sign rather than after. The questions above take minutes to answer when the file is still open and are expensive to answer once money has moved.
You can reach us through the contact page or look through the services directory. Related reading: choosing an investment adviser in Montenegro, legal recourse when a property deal goes wrong, and the due diligence checklist.
This page is general information about a regulatory regime, not advice on an individual file. It states no commission rates or fees, and no article numbers of Law 89/2025, for the reason given above.
