Organising the Lease and Apartment Handover in Belgrade

The lease is signed and the deposit has been transferred, yet most disputes between landlords and tenants in Belgrade do not arise from the wording of the contract. They arise from a handover report that is missing or incomplete. If you fail to document properly what condition the apartment was in when the tenant moved in, you will usually lose the basis for a fair deposit settlement when they move out. This article explains how the apartment handover in Belgrade is organised in practice, as a complement to the content of the lease itself.

Why the handover report carries more weight than in Germany

Serbia has neither a legally prescribed form for a handover report (zapisnik o primopredaji stana) nor a central body that automatically mediates in a dispute. In practice this means that without your own documentation there is, in case of doubt, no objective evidence of the apartment's condition at move-in. In Germany a detailed handover report is often treated as a formality; in Serbia it is genuinely the most important document for protecting the deposit.

What belongs in the handover report

Meter readings. Electricity (struja) and, where available, individually metered gas or water are recorded with the exact reading at the time of handover. An important limitation that surprises many foreign owners: in most Belgrade apartment buildings, district heating and water are billed through the city's consolidated utility bill, Infostan, calculated on the basis of floor area and the number of registered occupants, not on individual consumption measured by a meter inside the apartment. Here it is enough to note that the apartment is connected to Infostan and how the costs are split between landlord and tenant.

Photo documentation. Every room is photographed, including close-ups of existing defects: scratches in the parquet, stains on the wall, wear on bathroom fixtures. The photos should carry a timestamp and ideally be sent straight to the tenant in a shared chat message (for example via WhatsApp), so that the time they were sent can be traced beyond doubt.

Inventory list. For furnished or partly furnished apartments, every piece of furniture and every appliance included in the rental is listed individually, together with its condition: washing machine in working order, fridge with a small dent in the door, sofa with visible wear on the armrest. The more precise the list, the less room there is for argument later.

Key handover. The number and type of all keys handed over: apartment door, building entrance, letterbox, cellar, garage and, where applicable, an intercom fob or a remote control for a gate. In older buildings with several entrances this point is easily forgotten and leads to arguments at move-out about missing or unreturned keys.

Function check. A short note that the heating, hot water, smoke detectors (if fitted) and household appliances were working at move-in, or a list of whatever was already not working at the time of handover.

Who should be present at the handover?

Ideally the landlord or their authorised representative (for owners who do not live locally, this is usually the property management company they have engaged) and the tenant in person. Both sides sign the report on the spot. If the owner is not present, the representative should be clearly authorised by a power of attorney to co-sign the report with legally binding effect.

Timing of the handover

The handover should take place immediately before or on the agreed start date of the tenancy, not days later when the tenant has already moved in and the original condition can no longer be reconstructed unambiguously. Just as important: the handover should take place close in time to the tenant's registration of residence with the police, since the signed lease is needed for that registration anyway.

Move-out: mirroring the move-in report

At move-out the same procedure is repeated in mirror image: new photos, new meter readings (where relevant), a check against the inventory list and the return of all keys. The decisive step, which in practice is often skipped, is to place the move-out report directly next to the move-in report and compare them point by point. Only then can you distinguish objectively between normal wear and tear from ordinary use, which as a rule may not be deducted from the deposit, and actual damage that goes beyond the usual wear.

Linking the deposit refund to the report

The lease should state explicitly that the deposit will be refunded within a specified period (ten to fourteen days is common) after the signed move-out report is available, and that any deductions must be justified by reference to specific damage documented in comparison with the move-in report. Without this link in the contract, the process remains unnecessarily vague and leaves the door wide open to disputes.

Checklist for organising the handover

Organising it remotely in practice

For owners who are not in Belgrade themselves, the property management company they have engaged usually handles both the move-in and the move-out report. It is important that this task is set out explicitly in the management agreement, including the obligation to send the owner the photo documentation and the signed report promptly. A report that is only filed with the local management company and never reaches the owner misses its real purpose as evidence for the owner.

Legal framework: why written form matters so much in Serbia

Tenancies in Serbia are governed by the Law on Obligations (Zakon o obligacionim odnosima). It regulates leases only in broad terms and, unlike German tenancy law with its detailed ancillary obligations, does not make any particular form mandatory either for the lease or for a handover report. An oral lease is in principle valid, but in a dispute it is practically impossible to prove. That is precisely why in Serbia the burden of proof shifts more heavily onto your own documentation than in legal systems with denser regulation.

A point that most guides pass over: a lease that has been certified by a notary or confirmed before a public notary (overen ugovor) can, under certain conditions, serve as an enforceable instrument (izvršna isprava). In concrete terms, if rent is not paid or the tenant refuses to hand back the apartment, the landlord can take action against the tenant more quickly, without full court proceedings, than would be possible with a simple private contract. For higher-priced lettings, or with tenants whose creditworthiness is hard to assess, it is therefore worth weighing whether the additional notary fees are justified by faster enforcement if things go wrong. Whether this option makes sense in a specific case, and how to implement it in detail, should be discussed with a lawyer or notary licensed in Serbia, as practice and costs differ from firm to firm and from case to case.

The tax side: the deposit is not rental income, the rent is

One point that is easily overlooked when organising the handover, because formally it has nothing to do with the report: the deposit itself is not taxable income, as long as it is held as security and repaid when the apartment is returned properly. The ongoing rent, by contrast, is subject to income tax on rental income in Serbia. For individuals this is typically charged at a rate of 20% on the gross amount reduced by a flat-rate cost allowance (often 25%), which results in an effective burden of roughly 15% of the gross rent. These figures are a guide and not tax advice for an individual case. The exact calculation, especially when letting through a company rather than as a private individual, should be agreed with a Serbian tax adviser before the contract is signed.

Worked example: a typical deposit settlement

To show how a cleanly documented process works out in concrete terms at the end, here is a simplified example for an apartment with a deposit of €500:

Without a move-in report, in this example it would have been impossible to attribute the burn mark clearly to the tenancy period or to separate normal wear and tear from real damage. In case of doubt, the landlord would then have had to either pay out the full deposit or agree on an estimate that satisfies neither side.

Frequently asked questions about apartment handovers in Belgrade

Does the handover report have to be translated into Serbian?

No particular language is prescribed by law. In practice, however, a bilingual version (Serbian/English or Serbian/German) is advisable if the owner does not read Serbian, precisely because in a dispute the report could be submitted to a Serbian court or a mediation body, where the Serbian version would be authoritative anyway.

How long should photos and reports be kept?

Since contractual claims in Serbia are generally subject to limitation periods (the general period for contractual claims is several years, and often shorter for regularly recurring payments such as rent), it makes sense to keep the complete documentation for at least three to five years after the tenancy ends. If in doubt, the exact period for the type of claim in question should be clarified with a lawyer.

What if the tenant refuses to sign the move-out report?

In that case the handover should still be documented with as much evidence as possible: timestamped photos, ideally a short video of the walk-through, and a note with the date and time stating that the tenant was invited to sign but did not attend or was not willing to sign. In a dispute, every additional piece of documentation that is traceably dated counts in favour of the party that created it.

A properly organised handover takes a little more time at move-in than a quick walk-through and a handshake. At the end of the tenancy, however, it saves exactly the discussion that most often leads to real conflict between landlord and tenant: who pays for what, and how anyone knows what the apartment originally looked like.