Can You Still Buy Property for Residency in Montenegro?

On the last day of 2025, while Europe wound down for the new year, Montenegro rewrote the rules on who gets to stay.

There was no announcement. No press conference. Just a law published in the Official Gazette, effective eight days later, that quietly ended a decade-long experiment in openness.

For ten years, Montenegro operated on a simple principle: buy almost any property, and you could live here. A studio in Budva. A village ruin outside Kolašin. Even a plot of land, technically, could unlock residence. It didn’t matter what you paid or whether you ever showed up. Ownership was enough.

That’s over now.

From early 2026 onward, if you’re not an EU citizen and you want to live in Montenegro through property ownership, the state has a number in mind: €150,000. Not market value. Not what you negotiated. The tax-assessed value recorded by your local municipality — which in practice often runs below market price, making the effective threshold higher than it first appears. That’s the baseline, and assuming standard immigration conditions are met, it’s not negotiable.

It’s a small change on paper. In practice, it’s a signal about what kind of country Montenegro wants to become.

For years, Montenegro’s residency system functioned less like policy and more like an open door. Foreigners — mostly Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, increasingly American and British — bought cheaply, stayed indefinitely, and paid very little in. The system worked because it was barely a system at all. You could hold a residence permit on the strength of a €40,000 apartment you visited twice a year.

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The new law closes that door. Not with force, but with economics.

If you already hold a property-based permit, you’re protected. Even if you apply for renewal after the new law takes effect, your extension will be processed under the old rules. Same if your application was already filed before the law came into force. Montenegro isn’t purging existing residents. It’s just drawing a line.

But from now on, the calculation changes. Non-EU buyers looking at a €90,000 apartment in Herceg Novi or a €120,000 plot near Tivat now face a choice: buy it as an investment, or accept that it won’t confer the right to live here. For some, that won’t matter. For others — especially the growing cohort of remote workers, retirees, and lifestyle migrants who assumed Montenegro would always be the easy option — it changes everything.

What’s striking is how targeted this is. EU, EEA and Swiss citizens are untouched. They retain full free-movement rights. The €150,000 rule applies only to everyone else. It’s not protectionism. It’s stratification.

What’s equally striking is that the threshold could have been higher. Earlier policy discussions proposed a €200,000 minimum. The final law settled lower — a signal that Montenegro wants to filter, not exclude. It’s setting a floor, not building a wall.

The property threshold is only half the story.

For just as long as Montenegro offered easy residence through ownership, it also offered an even easier route through business. Register a company, appoint yourself director, own 51% of the shares, and you could renew your permit indefinitely — even if the company did almost nothing.

It became commonplace. A structure that satisfied the letter of the law while doing nothing for the economy.

That’s finished too.

Under the amended law, company directors who are also majority owners seeking to extend their residence must now show that their business paid at least €5,000 per year in taxes and social contributions. Not revenue. Not profit. Actual payments into the state system.

Again, EU nationals are exempt. Everyone else has to prove substance.

It’s not a high bar — €5,000 is roughly what you’d pay employing one person at median wages — and again, it’s notably more accessible than earlier policy proposals, which focused on mandatory staffing requirements. The final law instead uses tax contribution as the test, making it achievable for small operations, consultancies, and single-person companies that generate real economic value without needing a full payroll.

If you’re not running a real business, with real activity, Montenegro no longer wants to pretend you are. But if you are, the barrier is reasonable.

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There’s something deeper at work here, beyond the mechanics of thresholds and tax receipts.

Montenegro is trying to solve a problem most small countries face but few admit to: how do you stay open without losing control?

For two decades, since independence in 2006, Montenegro built its growth model on welcoming foreign money with minimal friction. Russians funded Porto Montenegro. Turks bought coastal apartments. Israelis, Ukrainians, and more recently Americans discovered a European foothold that didn’t require the bureaucratic gauntlet of Schengen.

It worked, economically. Property prices rose. Construction boomed. Whole towns — Tivat, Budva, parts of Bar — were reshaped by foreign demand.

But it also created distortions. Local buyers were priced out of their own markets. Coastal towns filled with seasonal residents who contributed little outside the summer months. And the residency system, designed to attract investment, ended up attracting something else too: transience.

The new law is Montenegro’s attempt to correct that. Not by shutting the door, but by raising the floor.

What’s interesting is the timing. This isn’t a crisis response. Property sales are still strong. Foreign interest remains high. Montenegro’s EU accession process, while slow, is advancing. There’s no external pressure forcing this change.

It’s a choice. A recalibration.

Montenegro is deciding, in real time, what kind of place it wants to be once it joins the European Union — probably sometime in the next decade. And what it’s decided, apparently, is that it wants residents who are committed, not just convenient.

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How Montenegro compares

Put in European context, Montenegro’s new threshold lands in interesting territory.

Portugal killed its Golden Visa property route entirely in October 2023. Non-EU buyers can no longer secure residency through real estate at any price. The only path now is a €500,000 investment fund — passive, institutional, and more than three times Montenegro’s threshold.

Greece still offers property-based residency, but the baseline has climbed steeply. €250,000 will get you there if you’re converting commercial property to residential. Otherwise it’s €400,000 in secondary regions, or €800,000 in Athens, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, and Santorini. Properties must also be at least 120 square metres.

Croatia offers a one-year permit for property owners with no minimum threshold, but it’s non-renewable without a six-month gap. The real route is business — €25,000 capital, three local employees, and a genuine operation. It’s residency, but not stability.

Albania has no minimum at all. Buy any property over 20 square metres, get a one-year renewable permit. It’s the most open door in the region — and also the least certain path to permanence.

Montenegro now sits between Croatia’s instability and Greece’s high-end segmentation. €150,000 is enough to matter, but not enough to exclude. It’s residency with commitment, not wealth signalling.

And unlike Portugal, it’s not closing the property route. It’s clarifying it.

The law also does something else, quieter but just as significant: it modernises the entire immigration apparatus.

Applications can now be filed electronically. Biometrics are captured after arrival, not before. Fees can be paid online. A new Visa Information System brings Montenegro’s infrastructure in line with EU standards.

These aren’t headline changes, but they matter. They’re the kind of unglamorous administrative upgrades that signal a country is serious about integration, not just aspiration.

Brussels pays attention to this. Residency regimes, visa systems, border controls — these are areas where EU accession candidates get scrutinised hard. Montenegro knows this. The law reads, in part, like pre-emptive compliance.

Some provisions only activate once Montenegro formally joins the EU. But the core changes — the €150,000 threshold, the €5,000 company rule, the digitalisation — apply immediately.

Montenegro isn’t waiting for permission. It’s building the infrastructure now.

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What this means for the market

In the short term, it probably accelerates the stratification that was already underway.

Properties above €150,000 in tax value become the new baseline for non-EU buyers who want residence. That shifts demand upward — toward better locations, larger units, newer developments. Anything below that threshold either becomes a pure investment play or appeals mainly to EU buyers who don’t need the residency hook.

For developers, the incentive is clear: build for the €150,000-plus segment, or build for locals and EU nationals. The middle ground just got harder to justify.

For existing owners below the threshold, not much changes unless they’re trying to sell to a non-EU buyer who wants residence. In that case, the pool of potential buyers just shrank.

For agents, the script changes. You can no longer lead with “buy this and live here” unless the numbers work. The pitch has to be more sophisticated now: investment return, lifestyle value, location fundamentals. Residency becomes a benefit, not the benefit.

And for Montenegro itself, the bet is this: that by filtering for quality — for buyers and businesses that contribute meaningfully — it builds a more durable, more integrated foreign population. One that doesn’t just pass through, but stays.

Whether that works depends on what happens next. On how the market adjusts. On whether buyers above the threshold actually behave differently than buyers below it. On whether €150,000 turns out to be the right line, or just the first line.

But as signals go, it’s unambiguous.

Montenegro is no longer competing to be Europe’s easiest residency option.

It’s competing to be Europe’s smartest one.

Peter Flynn moved to Montenegro in 2005 and began working in the country's property market as a private speculator. He established New Territory DOO in 2006 to formalise his operations after the country gained independence. With two decades of experience guiding international buyers through Montenegro's property market and residency processes, he specialises in the Tivat and Bay of Kotor area. Working alongside business partner Maša Flynn, NT Realty (which takes its name from the New Territory holding company) has helped hundreds of buyers from the US, UK, Australia, and beyond navigate Montenegro's evolving legal and regulatory landscape. Peter maintains close working relationships with local lawyers, notaries, and government officials, providing clients with current, practical guidance rooted in on-the-ground experience.