Croatia’s New Real Estate Brokerage Law: What Foreign Buyers Need to Know Before Signing With an Agent in 2026

If you’re planning to buy property in Croatia in the second half of 2026, the relationship you have with your real estate agent is about to be governed by a substantially new set of rules. After 15 years without meaningful reform, Croatia’s Zakon o posredovanju u prometu nekretninama (Law on Real Estate Brokerage) is being rewritten — and the changes go directly to the practical mechanics of how agencies advertise listings, how they charge you, and what recourse you have if something goes wrong.

The Croatian government, led by Minister of Economy Ante Šušnjar, approved the draft proposal in March 2026, and the bill is now moving through Parliament. The Ministry has explicitly said it expects the law to take effect during the first half of 2026, with industry sources targeting the summer. For a foreign buyer mid-search right now, that means the transaction you start in May could be completed under the new regime.

Here is what is actually changing, and why each piece matters if you’re a foreign buyer.

Why a new law, and why now

The current brokerage law dates from 2007. In that time the Croatian property market has done something the original drafters never anticipated: it has internationalized, professionalized in some pockets, and amateurized in others. There are now roughly 1,500 registered real estate agencies operating across the country, ranging from established offices with vetted listings to one-person operations advertising properties they have never set foot in.

The push for reform came largely from the Croatian Chamber of Economy (HGK) and its Real Estate Association, who argued that the lack of professional standards was actively hurting both buyers and the agencies trying to do things properly. As Branka Augustinović of the Ministry of Economy put it on HRT’s Studio 4, the existing law had received only minor tweaks for two decades while the underlying market was transformed.

The reforms cluster around four themes: how listings appear, how commissions get charged, how agents and agencies are qualified, and how the consequences for misconduct work. Each one has direct implications for what a foreign buyer will experience.

No more phantom listings: every advertised property needs a signed mandate

Under the new law, an agency cannot advertise a property unless it has first signed a written brokerage agreement with the owner.

If you have spent any time on the Croatian portals — Njuškalo, Index Oglasi, Nekretnine.hr — you have almost certainly encountered the same villa listed by four different agencies at three different prices. Sometimes the property has already sold months ago. Sometimes the owner never gave anyone permission to list it in the first place; an agency simply scraped a competitor’s listing and republished it to harvest enquiries.

The new mandatory-contract rule is designed to end this. For foreign buyers, the practical effect is twofold. First, the inventory you see should be more accurate and less duplicated. Second, when you contact an agency about a specific property, you can — and should — ask whether they hold a signed brokerage agreement with the owner. After the law takes effect, the answer to that question becomes a basic compliance test.

The end of double-dipping on commission

This is the change with the most direct impact on a buyer’s wallet.

For years, the standard pattern in Croatia has been that the agency collects a commission from both the seller and the buyer on the same transaction — often the maximum percentage from each. On a €500,000 purchase, a 3% commission charged twice meant the agency took €30,000 out of the deal. Foreign buyers, unfamiliar with the local custom and often presented with the fee as a non-negotiable line item at signing, frequently absorbed it without realizing they had paid a premium relative to what a local would have paid.

The new law introduces two protections. The first is a baseline rule: commission is paid by the party that signed the brokerage contract. If you, the buyer, never signed a brokerage agreement directly with the agency, the agency cannot send you an invoice. The second is a cap on cumulative commission. As Minister Šušnjar put it: if the agency’s stated rate is 2%, it can charge 2% to the buyer or 2% to the seller, or 1% to each side. It cannot charge the full 2% to both. The total cumulative commission for the transaction is now capped at the agency’s maximum stated rate.

If you are buying through an agency that asks you to sign a brokerage agreement, ask for the rate in writing and ask explicitly whether the seller is also paying a commission on the same property. Under the new law, the answer should determine what you owe.

No more mandatory viewing agreements

One specific practice the new law targets is the “property viewing agreement” — a document some agencies have been asking prospective buyers to sign before being allowed to see a property in person. The agreements often contain clauses that automatically commit the buyer to pay a commission if they subsequently purchase the property through any channel, sometimes for a period of months or years.

The Ministry singled this practice out during the public consultation phase, after numerous complaints from buyers who felt they had been ambushed with a legal commitment just to step inside a house. Under the new law, requiring such an agreement as a precondition for a viewing is explicitly prohibited. You should be able to inspect a property without signing anything.

Higher insurance, real recourse

The minimum mandatory professional liability insurance for brokerage agencies is rising to €100,000 per claim and €300,000 in annual aggregate. That matters because it is the pool of money that pays out if an agency’s error or omission costs you, the client, financially — for example, if a listing materially misrepresents the legal status of a property and you discover the problem only after signing.

Under the previous regime the minimums were considerably lower, which in practice meant that small agencies were thinly capitalized against the kinds of losses a typical foreign-buyer transaction could generate. The new floors put real money behind the agency’s professional obligations.

One agent, one agency

Each licensed real estate agent (a registered agent posrednik on the Imenik agenata) will be permitted to work for only one agency at a time, and every agency will be required to employ at least one full-time qualified agent on its payroll.

This is a structural rule, not a flashy one, but it cleans up a real conflict-of-interest issue. Under the old framework an agent could quietly hold positions with multiple agencies, which created opacity around who was actually representing whom on a given deal. After the change, the agent showing you a property is contractually tied to a single agency, and the agency cannot operate at all unless at least one qualified person stands behind its work.

The penalties have teeth

The previous law’s enforcement provisions were considered toothless by the industry, and the new fine schedule reflects that:

• Agencies operating without ministry authorization, or that lose their eligibility and continue to operate, face fines of €15,000 to €30,000.
• Individual agents working without being entered into the Imenik agenata, or working for more than one agency simultaneously, face fines of €3,000 to €6,000.
• The law also introduces a binding code of ethics (a separate rulebook) and a longer schedule of differentiated penalties for narrower violations.

The intent, in the Ministry’s own framing, is to make unethical practice expensive enough that it stops being a viable business model.

What this means for you as a foreign buyer

Most reputable agencies already operate at or above the new standards. If you are working with an established office, the day-to-day of your transaction will not change. But the law shifts the floor under the whole market, and there are a few specific things worth doing as you navigate the next several months:

• Ask, in writing, whether the agency holds a signed brokerage mandate with the owner of any property they are showing you. After the law takes effect, the answer must be yes.
• Refuse to sign anything as a precondition for a viewing. If an agency insists, walk away — this practice is on its way out by law.
• Get the commission structure in writing before you sign anything. Specifically ask whether the seller is also paying a commission, and whether the cumulative commission across both sides exceeds the agency’s stated maximum rate.
• Confirm the agent’s registration. A licensed agent is listed on the public Imenik agenata maintained by the Ministry of Economy. After the new law, that agent should be tied to only one agency.
• Keep records of every fee invoiced to you. Higher insurance minimums mean real recourse is now possible if something goes wrong, but recourse depends on documentation.

The broader picture matters too. Croatia’s real estate market has been under pressure for the past 18 months — fewer transactions, prices that are still rising, a regulatory landscape that’s tightening in several directions at once (the new property tax on vacant buildings, the proposed Affordable Housing Act, the EU’s looming short-term rental registration regime). The new brokerage law is one more layer of structural change. For foreign buyers, that means the next 6–12 months are not the moment to assume the way things worked last year is the way they work now.

If you have questions about what the changing rules mean for a specific purchase you’re considering, get in touch. We work exclusively with foreign buyers and have been tracking the legislative changes closely since the e-savjetovanje opened in late 2025.

Sources and further reading

• Ministry of Economy — Modernizacija Zakona o posredovanju u prometu nekretninama (Croatian — official press release from Minister Šušnjar)
• Croatia Week — Croatia proposes new real estate law to strengthen buyer protection and market transparency (English)
• Croatian Chamber of Economy (HGK) — Izmjene Zakona o posredovanju donijet će više reda na tržištu nekretnina (Croatian — industry position)
• Dnevnik.hr — Na tržište nekretnina stižu nova pravila i drastične kazne (Croatian — detailed coverage of the new fine schedule)
• e-Savjetovanja — Savjetovanje o Nacrtu prijedloga Zakona o posredovanju u prometu nekretnina (Croatian — the public consultation page where the draft text was published)