Montenegrin building law does not have one category called "repairs". It has three, defined by article and by enumerated list: regular maintenance, necessary works, and urgent works. Which list a job falls into decides who may order it, who pays, whether an owner who acts alone gets the money back, and whether the municipality can step in and bill the building.
For a foreign owner who is not in the country when something breaks, this is the most useful distinction in the whole statute.
The three lists
Regular maintenance — Article 10. The list is deliberately mundane: painting interior walls; painting exterior and interior joinery and paperhanging; painting ironmongery, radiators and other heating elements; ceramic and other finishing works on floors and walls; replacing floor coverings and coating floors; painting the façade; replacing and repairing joinery including protective elements such as shutters and blinds; repairing flat and pitched roofs; maintaining lighting and other electrical devices such as bulbs, switches, sockets, bells, lamps and intercoms; replacing and repairing locks and other elements belonging to the building.
Necessary works — Article 11. These are structural: reconstruction of the roof structure, load-bearing walls, columns, inter-storey structures and foundations; reconstruction of chimneys and flues; reconstruction of flat and pitched roofs; replacement of installations on the common parts and devices — water, sewage, electrical, gas, central heating and hot-water systems, air conditioning; reconstruction of the façade or the building's external appearance; insulation of walls, floors and foundations; and replacement of the lift or other works on the lift.
Urgent works — Article 12. These are defined by purpose first: works that must be carried out without delay, to protect people's life and health, their safety and the protection of property, to the level of remediating the existing state, in order to prevent further harmful consequences and until funds are secured for carrying out the necessary works. The enumerated list: works on gas installations; works on the central heating and hot-water system; works in case of rupture, damage or blockage of the common water and sewage installation; works on the electrical installation; repair of damage to chimneys and flues; repair of damaged parts of the roof; works on the façade; and works to preserve the static stability of the building or of parts of it.
Note the built-in limit in that definition. Urgent works go to the level of remediating the existing state — they stabilise, they do not upgrade. The full reconstruction that follows is a necessary work, decided and funded in the ordinary way.
| List | What it covers | Who decides | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular maintenance | painting, joinery, floor coverings, roof repairs, lighting, locks | assembly, through the maintenance programme | Art. 10 |
| Necessary works | structure, chimneys, roofs, installations, façade, insulation, lift | assembly | Art. 11 |
| Urgent works | gas, heating, burst water and sewage, electrics, chimney and roof damage, façade, static stability | the manager, without delay | Art. 12 |
Who must act, and how fast
Article 12 puts the duty on the manager: the manager is obliged to ensure urgent works are carried out without delay. And then a paragraph that surprises owners: the manager is obliged to ensure urgent works are carried out on a special part of the building as well, if the owner of that part does not carry them out.
So a burst pipe inside an absent owner's flat is not simply that owner's problem to solve at their convenience. It is a job the manager must get done.
Article 13 puts a matching duty on you. A unit owner is obliged, on becoming aware and without delay, to notify the manager, or the legal person entrusted with maintenance, of the need to undertake urgent works. The owner must also, without delay, report damage they have learned of on the common parts, and damage on special parts if it threatens danger to other parts of the building.
Then the provision that answers "may I just act": where such danger threatens, every unit owner is obliged to take the necessary measures without the consent of the other unit owners. The statute defines those measures as actions and procedures — urgent repairs to electrical, water, gas, sewage and other installations, repairs to the roof or façade and similar — aimed at removing the danger of damage to special and common parts.
The reimbursement rule that follows from all this
Read Article 13 together with Article 17(3), and the money question resolves cleanly.
Article 17(3) provides that an owner at whose expense works were carried out on the common parts without the authorisation of the manager or the assembly has no right of recourse — except in the case of urgent works.
That single exception is why the classification matters. Paint the stairwell on your own initiative and you have bought the building a stairwell. Stop a burst common pipe at two in the morning and the statute leaves your claim intact. How the fund behind that claim is built and reported is set out in the point, and the account.
If nobody does it: the municipality steps in
Article 15 is the enforcement end, and it is stronger than most owners expect.
If the manager or the assembly do not ensure the carrying out of urgent works, the competent local authority is obliged to secure their execution — to the level of remediating the existing state, to prevent further harmful consequences — through a company or in another way, at the expense of the building. The unit owners are obliged to reimburse those costs to the local authority, in the deadlines and manner the local authority determines.
Then the sentence that gives it teeth: the invoice for the urgent works carried out is an enforceable instrument in enforcement proceedings. Not a claim to be established in litigation first — an instrument that goes straight into enforcement.
Article 15 also settles access. A unit owner is obliged to enable the carrying out of regular, urgent and necessary works and to allow authorised persons access to their special part. And where necessary and urgent works are needed, the owner is not in the unit and their whereabouts are unknown, entry into the premises without the owner's consent may be effected — on the order of the housing inspector, or of the competent local authority through the communal inspector in accordance with the law — if that is indispensable for saving people and property.
For a non-resident owner, that is a practical instruction rather than a threat: leave a key and a contact with the manager, because the alternative route into your flat exists and does not require you.
What this means for an owner who is usually elsewhere
- Learn which list your problem is on before you authorise anything. Only urgent works preserve a right of recourse when you act without authorisation (Articles 12 and 17(3)).
- Report, and report in writing. Article 13 makes notification your duty, not a courtesy — including damage inside your own flat that threatens other parts.
- Expect stabilisation, not renewal. Urgent works go to the level of remediating the existing state; the rebuild is a necessary work (Articles 11 and 12).
- Leave access arranged. Article 15 obliges you to enable access, and provides for entry without consent where you cannot be found.
- Take the municipality's invoice seriously. It is an enforceable instrument (Article 15).
- Check whether there is a manager at all. The urgent-works duty sits on that office; where it is vacant, see the upravnik.
The decision-making rules behind regular and necessary works — quorum, votes and who may bind the building — are in how decisions get made. Defects in a new build follow a different regime again: new-build handover in Montenegro.
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. A building manager is engaged by the assembly, not by you individually.
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 classify the works before the invoices arrive, we put the notification in writing so the duty under Article 13 is discharged and dated, and we say plainly when an owner is about to spend money the building will never repay. 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 something has already broken
Send us the photographs, any message you have sent the manager, and the invoice if one has arrived. We will tell you which list the work falls into, whether your claim survives, and what has to be notified and to whom. 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. 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.
