The New Rental Act: What Changes and How to Protect Yourself as a Landlord

For years, Croatia's rental market has been caught between two extremes – growing demand and lagging regulation. The new Rental Act, which comes into force in 2025, attempts to keep pace with a market that has changed more in five years than in the previous thirty.

For years, apartment owners and tenants have lived in a grey area – unregulated contracts, cash payments, tenants without protection and landlords without payment security. The new law aims to put an end to this improvisation. A written contract becomes mandatory, reporting rentals to the Tax Administration becomes automatic, and inspectors gain real powers.

For landlords, this means one thing: professionalisation. Contracts are no longer a matter of trust, but of law. Landlords who avoid declaring their rental income risk not only fines, but also losing the right to future tax relief. Those who operate transparently, on the other hand, stand to gain more – security, access to legal protection and the trust of the market.

The law also introduces a novelty regarding rent levels. Local authorities will be able to set reference prices per square metre, in an attempt to prevent runaway prices in urban centres such as Zagreb and Split. But this is a double-edged sword: too much regulation may deter private landlords, which reduces supply and in turn pushes prices up again.

Most importantly, this law brings rentals back into legal channels. For a maturing market, this is a major step forward. For owners, it is a call to finally start managing their property as an investment, not as a "room on paper". Imperium Immobiliare sees this as a new wave of professionalisation that will bring the long-term stability and trust the market has been seeking for years.