A Montenegrin flat comes with a set of duties towards the building that most foreign owners never hear about until one of them is breached. They are short, specific, and three of them carry deadlines.
They also answer a question that comes up in every short-let conversation: does the building know, and does it have to.
Every change in disposal is reportable
Article 23 opens with a general rule, and it is broader than "sale".
Unit owners are obliged to report to the assembly of unit owners, or to the manager, every change in relation to the disposal of the special part of the building or a part of it. The manager is then obliged to inform the competent local authority of those changes.
"Disposal" here is doing the work: a sale is a change, but so is any other act by which you dispose of the unit or a part of it. If you are buying, this is also why the building tends to know who the owner is before the register does — and why a manager may ask you for documents you assumed were nobody's business.
Letting: fifteen days, in writing, with the tenant's details
Article 23 then makes the letting case explicit and dated.
A unit owner is obliged, within 15 days from letting the special part of the building, to deliver to the manager written notice of the lease.
The notice must contain:
- details of the tenant and the landlord — name, surname and address for a natural person; name, seat and tax identification number for a legal person;
- the area of the leased space;
- the duration of the lease.
And the loop closes upward: the manager, or the temporary manager, is obliged to deliver quarterly written notice to the competent local authority of those data.
Read that with the short-let economy in mind. The building is a reporting node: your tenant's identity, the area let and the term reach the municipality on a quarterly cycle, through a duty that sits on you first and the manager second. The separate licensing and tax regime for short-term letting is a different statute again, set out in Airbnb licensing in Montenegro.
| Event | What you must do | Deadline | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any change in disposal of the unit | report to the assembly or the manager | not fixed — on the change | Art. 23 |
| Letting the unit | written notice to the manager with tenant, landlord, area, duration | 15 days | Art. 23 |
| Manager's onward reporting | written notice to the local authority | quarterly | Art. 23 |
| Conversion to business premises | per Government regulation | — | Art. 27 |
House rules are municipal law, not building custom
Article 24 places the house rules outside the building's own discretion.
Unit owners and users of special and common parts are obliged to comply with the house rules. Those rules are regulated by an act of the competent authority of the local self-government unit — not by the assembly.
And the statute says what the municipality regulates in particular: the permitted noise level in the use of special parts, and the conditions and times under which certain economic activities and other actions may be carried out in a residential building or a residential-and-business building, so that the peace of flat owners in using their flats is not disturbed.
That is the provision behind most disputes about a flat used commercially, or about a short-let with a rotating population. The limit is not the neighbours' patience; it is a municipal act, and it is findable.
What you may not do to the building's appearance
Article 25 is a short list of prohibitions, and each requires the approval of the competent local authority before anything is done. Without that approval it is prohibited to:
- mar the appearance of façades by installing devices;
- change the building's appearance by glazing;
- change the building's appearance by walling up;
- change or mar the appearance in any other way.
The scope and type of permitted works that may be carried out on a residential building is prescribed by the competent local self-government authority.
Three of the most common owner improvements in a coastal building — an air-conditioning unit on the façade, an enclosed balcony, a filled-in loggia — sit squarely in that list. They are not assembly questions in the first instance; they are municipal approval questions.
Turning a flat into business premises
Article 27 handles the change of use. A special or common part of a residential building may be converted into business premises, and business premises created by such a conversion may be converted back into a special or common part, in the manner determined by a regulation of the Government of Montenegro.
So the route exists and it is national, not local — and it is separate from the municipal act on the conditions and times for carrying on an activity in a residential building under Article 24. An owner planning a ground-floor office or a rental reception desk has both to satisfy.
Where the building's own decision-making sits alongside this — including that the assembly decides on letting common parts to third parties — is set out in how decisions get made.
The registers behind all of it
Article 26 requires the competent local authority, or a company entrusted by the local self-government, to keep three registers: the register of unit owners, the register of residential buildings and their special parts, and the register of managers of residential buildings.
For a buyer that is a useful triangulation. The cadastre tells you who is registered as owner of the unit; these registers tell you how the building itself is constituted and who manages it.
What to do about it
- Notify the letting within 15 days, in writing. The content is prescribed — tenant and landlord details, area, duration (Article 23).
- Report the sale to the manager as well as the register. The duty is to report every change in disposal (Article 23).
- Find the municipal house-rules act before you plan a short let. Noise limits and the times for economic activity are set there (Article 24).
- Get approval before the air-conditioning unit, the glazing or the walling up. All three are on the Article 25 list.
- Treat conversion to business premises as a national procedure. Article 27 refers it to a Government regulation.
- Ask which registers the building appears in. Article 26 names all three.
What you owe the building financially, and what happens to your contributions when you sell, is in the point, and the account.
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 letting agent is paid on occupancy.
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 put the Article 23 notice in writing and on time rather than after a complaint, we read the municipal house-rules act before a short-let plan is built on assumptions, and we say plainly when a planned alteration needs approval that has not been obtained. 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 a letting will be profitable. What we protect is your legal position — title, contract, registration, status, and the deadlines that decide all four.
Before you list it or alter it
Send us the lease you intend to sign, or the drawing of the alteration you intend to make, and the building's details. We will tell you what has to be notified, to whom and by when, and whether the work needs municipal approval before it starts. 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.
