Montenegro adds a 150,000 euro test to its property residence route

Montenegro has put a monetary test into the residence permit that foreigners obtain by owning property there. From 17 January 2026 an applicant must produce proof of the property’s value issued by the local tax authority, and that proof qualifies only if the taxable base it records is at least 150,000 euros. The obligation does not fall on citizens of European Union member states, on their family members whatever passport those relatives hold, or on citizens of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The requirement was introduced by the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Foreigners, published in the Official Gazette on 9 January 2026 and in force from the eighth day after publication. Until 17 January the article governing this route carried no figure at all.

What the article actually requires

The route lives in Article 56 of the Law on Foreigners. Before the amendment it asked an applicant to show that they owned the property: a cadastre extract, or equivalent proof under the cadastre law. Nothing in it spoke about how much the property was worth.

The amendment adds a second document to that list, and then defines it. The proof of value is the decision assessing real-estate transfer tax, issued by the local administration body responsible for collecting that tax, and the taxable base recorded in it must not be below 150,000 euros.

That definition is the part worth reading twice, because it moves the value test off the contract. What has to clear 150,000 is not the price the buyer paid but the base on which the transaction was assessed. The transfer-tax law — in the text enacted in 2013, whose rate structure has since been replaced but whose valuation rules are quoted here as they then stood — makes that base the market value of the property at the moment of acquisition, established from the instruments of acquisition. Where the price stated in the instrument is below market value, or is not stated at all, the tax authority determines market value itself, by an assessment drawn from comparative data for similar properties in the same area at the same time, or by a licensed appraiser where no comparable data exist. A contract written at 150,000 euros is therefore not the end of the enquiry.

The number that circulated was not the number enacted

At the draft stage in November 2025 the minimum was reported as 200,000 euros. The text Parliament adopted on 31 December 2025, and the President promulgated the same day, sets 150,000 — and sets it on the taxable base rather than on the price.

Who is protected

The amendment does more than preserve applications already in the queue, and the distinction matters. Article 217a does the ordinary thing: procedures begun before 17 January 2026 are finished under the previous law. Article 217b goes further. Where a permit on the property ground was issued before that date, a renewal application filed after it is also concluded under the previous law — that is, without the value test. On the face of the text that protection carries no expiry, which is not the same as a guarantee that none will be added.

The split runs through the rest of the renewal rules as well. Article 64 now requires a renewal application to be filed no earlier than 60 days before expiry, and a renewal on the property ground to be accompanied by proof that tax obligations were discharged over the life of the permit. Those conditions belong to the amended law, so they meet holders whose permits were issued from 17 January onwards; Article 217b sends the earlier group’s renewals to the previous law instead.

One further change narrows what a permit can become. Article 38 now provides that temporary residence may be renewed only on the legal ground on which it was approved, the exception being renewal for family reunification where the application is filed before the permit expires. Renewal onto a different ground is not something the amended law provides for.

What the law leaves open

The clearest question concerns co-owners. Since 2019 the article has admitted an applicant who owns at least half of a property, and that paragraph survives the amendment untouched. The new paragraph sets the floor on the taxable base without saying whether, for someone holding half, the 150,000 is measured against the whole property or against the share.

The two statutes read together point towards the share. Article 56 asks for the base recorded in the transfer-tax assessment, and the transfer-tax law, again in its 2013 text, provides that where co-owners acquire shares the base is struck separately for each of them on the value of the share acquired. What is missing is not a provision but a confirmation: no implementing guidance has yet been issued under the amendment, so how the requirement is applied to a half-owner in practice cannot be read off the page.

That gap has time to close. The amending law gives the ministry twelve months from entry into force — to 17 January 2027 — to adopt or align the implementing acts, and provides that existing ones continue to apply meanwhile so far as they are not contrary to the new text. The rulebook on the forms and conditions for temporary-residence permits carried on the ministry’s own pages is still the text of 31 March 2020, which predates the value test by six years.

The other route is already gone

The test lands on a market where the direct route to a passport is closed. Montenegro’s economic-citizenship programme rested on a government Decision whose own term ran to 31 December 2022, and the Montenegrin Investments Agency records that applications cannot be submitted after that date. This amendment concerns residence, and it leaves that position untouched.

For a buyer weighing a purchase now, the practical questions are narrower than the figure suggests. Where the value test applies, it is the taxable base recorded by the tax authority, not the contract price, that decides whether the requirement is met. A co-owner cannot yet be told from the Foreigners Act alone which figure applies to them. And a permit issued on this ground before 17 January 2026 carries a protection that belongs to renewals on that same ground, which is a narrower thing than a permanent exemption from the test.