The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Special Conditions for Recording and Registration of Rights on Real Estate (hereinafter: the “Law”), which entered into force on 24th of October 2025. On the date of entry into force of the Law, the Law on Legalization of Buildings from 2015, which until now regulated the conditions, procedure and manner of legalization of illegally built buildings, ceases to be valid, and the procedures initiated under it are being suspended if they were initiated for real estate which are subject to recording under the new Law. 

I Reasons for adoption of the Law

According to the explanation of the proposal of the Law, the main reason for its adoption is the circumstance that the laws which until now regulated the matter of legalization of illegally built real estate did not give the expected results.

Namely, from 1997 until the last Law on Legalization of Buildings from 2015, a total of slightly more than 300,000 decisions on the legalization of buildings have been issued, which is quite low compared to the number of illegal buildings, currently nearing 5 million. During the period the previous laws were in force, unlawful construction did not stop (even though it was prescribed as a criminal offense), and the number of illegally constructed buildings has increased in the meantime instead of decreasing.

Some of the reasons for the ineffectiveness of earlier laws are the lack of planning documentation, demanding urban, technical and geodetic documentation, as well as long and expensive administrative procedures, so the tendency of the state with adopting the new Law is to eliminate the shortcomings of earlier laws and to make the procedure simpler, faster and cheaper for citizens.

II Key solutions of the Law

  • subject of recording and registration of rights – the Law explicitly sets out the types of real estate that are to be recorded and on which rights are to be registered in accordance with its provisions. These include, for example, real estate (buildings, parts of buildings i.e. separate parts of buildings) constructed contrary to the law, without an issued permit for the execution of works, as well as buildings for which a temporary construction permit was issued before 13th of May 2003. The land beneath the building or the part of the land on the cadastral lot on which the building was constructed is also subject of registration of rights;
  • urgency of the procedure – all procedures prescribed by the Law, as well as other procedures related to its application, are considered urgent, and one of the principles on which the implementation of the Law is based is the principle of procedural efficiency, according to which all procedures are conducted within deadlines that ensure fast and efficient processing. In line with this is the rule set out by the Law which prescribes that the registration of ownership rights under the Law shall be carried out with a priority, regardless of the order of decision-making prescribed by the law governing the procedure for registration in the real estate and infrastructure cadastre, and without the consent of the people who previously submitted requests to the Republic Geodetic Authority (hereinafter: the “Authority”); 
  • the state does not guarantee the safety and security of the real estate – the Law stipulates that the Republic of Serbia does not guarantee the safety and security of the use of real estate that has been registered in the records of real estate and rights thereto in accordance with the provisions of the Law. The owner of such real estate bears the risk of its use, as well as liability for potential damage caused to third parties;
  • digitalization of the procedure – all procedures shall be conducted electronically, therefore the procedure for recording real estate shall be carried out through a digital platform established by the Agency for Spatial Planning and Urbanism (hereinafter: the “Agency”). Immediately upon Law’s entering into force, the Agency makes the digital platform available to local self-government units, which are obliged to submit digital zoning plans to the Agency until 8th of December 2025. Upon receiving these plans, as well as other prescribed data and documentation, and also until 8th of December 2025, the Agency makes publicly available a dataset for public presentation, the publication of which constitutes a public invitation to all interested parties to, from the date of publication thereof, submit to the Agency an electronic application for the recording and registration of ownership rights, on the prescribed digital form;
  • registration fee – the registration fee shall be paid in the amount of the building land development contribution, and in certain cases its amount is set as a fixed sum, ranging from 1,000 euros to 100 euros, depending on the size of the locality (city/municipality) and the type of zone in which the real estate is located. The Law also prescribes certain cases in which there is no obligation to pay the fee. For example, the fee shall not be paid by owners of a family residential building or apartment who use the property for habitation and who are people with disabilities, veterans, families with three or more children, single parents, or recipients of social assistance;
  • preventing new illegal construction – inspection authorities are obligated under the Law to carry out enhanced inspection supervision, as well as continuous monitoring of spatial changes, and to report these findings on a weekly basis to the Republic Building Inspection. Additionally, for the purpose of preventing and suppressing new illegal construction, the Authority conducts annual recording on the territory of the Republic of Serbia and based on this data, updates the data in the records on identified changes on buildings that are not registered in the real estate cadastre. Buildings for which an application has been submitted, but for which the Agency determines that were not constructed by the date the Law entered into force, cannot be registered in accordance with the provisions of the Law.

III Deadlines for application and objections

  • deadlines for application – the deadline for submitting an application for the recording and registration of ownership rights begins to run upon the publication of the dataset for public presentation by the Agency i.e. upon the expiration of 45 days from the date the Law entered into force and lasts for 60 days. People who, for objective reasons, do not submit the application within this period, may submit it until 24th of October 2026, provided that they, together with the application, submit the evidence from which the justified reasons for failing to submit the application may be determined without a doubt;
  • deadlines for objections – within 60 days, and no later than 90 days from the moment the dataset for public presentation is published, applicants and all other interested parties will be able to submit objections to the Agency regarding this data.