Two apartments, same building quality, similar price, a few hundred metres apart. One has an upotrebna dozvola — a use permit. The other does not, and the agent explains that it is coming, that everyone builds this way here, that the paperwork always follows.
The difference between those two units is not administrative. It decides whether you may legally occupy what you buy, whether the building can be entered in the cadastre in your name, and in the worst case whether the property can lawfully be sold to you at all. This page explains what the permit certifies and what its absence actually means, at the moment when you are comparing two units and have to choose.
First, the thing most English-language guides get wrong
Almost every foreign-facing guide to Montenegrin property still describes the 2017 Law on Spatial Planning and Construction of Structures. That law no longer governs this.
In 2025 Montenegro split the old unified statute in two. Construction is now governed by the Law on the Construction of Structures (Zakon o izgradnji objekata), Official Gazette of Montenegro 19/2025 of 4 March 2025, amended by 92/2025 of 7 August 2025 and again by 160/2025 of 30 December 2025. Spatial planning sits in a separate law. Unauthorised building is dealt with by a new Law on the Legalisation of Unlawful Structures (Zakon o legalizaciji bespravnih objekata), Official Gazette 91/2025, in force since 14 August 2025.
This matters practically, not just pedantically. Guidance written against the 2017 regime describes a different set of documents, and a consolidated text that stops at 92/2025 already misses a December 2025 amendment that changed what you file with a use-permit application. If your adviser is quoting the 2017 law to you, they are quoting a repealed framework.
What the use permit actually certifies
Under Article 53 of the current law, the use permit is issued by the same authority that issued the building permit, and its function is to establish the structure's fitness for use. Where the building permit set out phased construction, it can be issued for a phase, or for a part of a structure that forms a technical unit capable of independent use.
The sequence runs like this. The investor must apply for the use permit before the structure is taken into use, and no later than seven days after receiving the final professional-supervision report (Article 54). The application is published on the issuing authority's website within three days. A technical inspection (tehnički pregled) then checks that what was built matches the building permit and the main design; it can also be run in parallel with construction. The permit itself is issued by formal decision within seven days of the technical inspection report (Article 59).
One detail is worth flagging because it is where stale sources go wrong. Until the end of 2025, the applicant also had to file proof that obligations under special regulations had been discharged. The amendment published in Official Gazette 160/2025 removed that document from the list in Article 54, for ordinary investors and for family houses alike. Anything you read that still lists it is describing last year's procedure.
The two consequences that decide your purchase
Use is prohibited without it. Article 60 states plainly that use of a structure is not permitted before the use permit is issued, the only exceptions being trial operation and functional testing of installed equipment. This is not a dormant provision: among the measures available to the building inspector is an order prohibiting use of a structure for which no use permit has been issued.
It is the gateway to the cadastre. Article 59 requires the investor, within seven days of delivery of the use permit, to apply for entry in the real estate cadastre. In other words the completed building's registration runs through the permit. Until it issues, there is no completed structure to register — and a right that is not registered is not a right you can mortgage, and not one whose transfer you can safely rely on. Our note on reading the list nepokretnosti explains what the sheet should look like once the registration has actually happened; the building permit stage is covered separately in our guide to the building permit process.
Three states, not two
Buyers tend to think in binary terms — legal or illegal. The law recognises three positions, and they carry very different risk.
| State of the structure | What the law says | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Built under a building permit, use permit issued | Fitness for use established under Article 53; registration follows under Article 59 | Occupiable, registrable, capable of being mortgaged and resold in the ordinary way |
| Built under a building permit, use permit not yet issued | Use prohibited under Article 60; inspector may order use to stop; registration of the completed structure not yet possible | Not unlawful, but not usable or registrable yet; the risk is timing and whether the technical inspection will pass |
| Built without a building permit, or contrary to it | Cannot be in legal circulation under Article 33 of the Legalisation Law; prohibition annotated in the G sheet | Cannot lawfully be transferred to you at all until legalised |
That third row is the one to understand properly. Article 33 of the Legalisation Law provides that a structure built without a construction act, or contrary to it, cannot be in legal circulation — it cannot be alienated, and no commercial or other activity may be carried on in it. The same applies to an unlawful structure that is not entered in the cadastre or for which no legalisation decision is issued.
The prohibition is not merely theoretical. It is recorded as an annotation in the G sheet of the property folio, and the list of people who can request that annotation includes the inspector who finds that an unlawful structure is being traded — and the notary or other officer authorised to certify or draw up the contract of transfer. The notary at your completion is among those who can trigger the very annotation that stops your purchase. Registration under the legalisation route has its own deadline, extended in 2026 to 14 August 2027.
What this means for money
Take the mortgage question first, because it is the one buyers ask. A bank's security is a hypothec entered in the cadastre against a registered right. Where the completed building has not been registered — because the use permit has not issued and the Article 59 chain has not started — there is no registered structure to encumber; there is land, and whatever rights exist over it. That is a legal constraint before it is a question of any particular bank's appetite, and it is why lending on new-build units tends to follow registration rather than precede it.
Resale runs on the same logic. A unit you cannot register is a unit whose next buyer faces exactly the problem you are facing now, and they will price it accordingly — or their lawyer will stop the transaction. Where the structure falls into the third row above, the discount is not a discount at all: there is no lawful sale to be had until the position is regularised.
If you are buying before completion, this analysis is inseparable from how your money is staged, which is the subject of our note on off-plan purchases, instalments and escrow. The general principle is unglamorous and reliable: payments should track verifiable milestones, and the final tranche should sit behind the use permit and the registration that follows it.
Buildings permitted under the earlier law
The 2025 statute does not invalidate what came before. Its transitional provisions leave proceedings that began before it took effect to be concluded under the law in force when they were started, where that is more favourable to the party, and the same approach applies to inspection proceedings already under way. An older building holding a use permit issued under the previous framework is not put in doubt by the change of statute.
The practical point for a buyer is narrower: you are not looking for a document issued under a particular law. You are looking for evidence that this structure, as actually built, has been certified fit for use by the competent authority, and that the certification matches what is standing on the plot.
What to ask for before you choose between two units
Ask for the use permit itself, by decision number and date, and for the building permit it refers to. Compare both against the property folio and against the physical unit — floor, area, layout — because a permit that certifies a different configuration from the one you are buying certifies nothing useful to you. Check the G sheet for annotations. Where the permit has not yet issued, ask what stage the technical inspection has reached and who the supervising engineer is, rather than accepting a date.
None of this requires you to be in Montenegro, and none of it is expensive to do properly. What it requires is doing it before signing, because every one of these questions becomes materially harder to answer after money has moved.
Send us the listing, the permit numbers and the property folio before you sign or transfer anything, and tell us which two units you are choosing between. We will check the permit position against the current law and the cadastre entries, and tell you plainly which of the three states above each unit is in. Where a structure needs construction-side review, that work sits with our construction advisory service.
