One month’s rent is the Belgrade norm, two is common for a furnished flat, and nobody holds it but your landlord. There is no deposit protection scheme here, no third-party escrow, no adjudication service to appeal to. The deposit sits in your landlord’s account and comes back because the contract and the evidence make it awkward not to return it — which means the work that gets your deposit back happens on the day you move in, not the day you move out.
That is the whole post in a paragraph, but the detail is worth having, because the failure mode is specific and avoidable: a tenant with no dated inventory, no meter photographs and a contract that says “the deposit covers damage and outstanding obligations” is in a conversation about opinions, and opinions favour whoever is holding the money.
Checked on 2 October 2026. Deposit sizes and return practice are market norms, not rules.
What you will actually be asked for
- One month’s rent on an unfurnished or semi-furnished flat, paid alongside the first month. So two months’ rent leaves your account in the first week.
- Two months more often on a fully furnished flat, in the central municipalities, or where the landlord has decided you are a short-stayer. Being visibly foreign and newly arrived moves this.
- Agency commission on top, where you went through an agency — a separate payment, usually between half a month’s rent and a full month, and normally paid by the tenant. What the commission actually buys is the post on whether it is worth it.
Add those up before you arrive, because the arrival spike is three to four times a normal month and it lands in a fortnight. The month itemised has the rest of that first-month arithmetic.
On the deposit being in cash: it often is, and a landlord asking for cash is not by itself a warning sign in Belgrade. A landlord asking for cash and refusing to write the amount into the contract or sign a receipt is. Get the amount, the date and the currency on paper — a one-line potvrda signed by both of you is enough — because cash with no record is the easiest deposit in the world to forget the size of.
The clause that decides it
A deposit clause doing its job says five things. Most templates say two.
| What the clause must say | Why |
|---|---|
| The amount, the currency and the date paid | A EUR-quoted rent paid in RSD needs the basis written down, or the return is argued at a different rate |
| What it covers | Damage beyond normal wear and unpaid bills — and nothing else |
| What it does not cover | Cleaning, repainting, normal wear, the landlord’s upgrades |
| A deadline for return | A named number of days after handover, not “once the bills are settled” |
| How deductions are evidenced | An itemised list with receipts, not a round number |
The deadline matters more than it sounds. Infostan arrives on its own schedule, so “after the final bills” is an open-ended delay the landlord controls. Name a number of days, and agree separately that a reasonable amount can be held back against a named outstanding bill — a specific sum against a specific bill, not the whole deposit against the possibility of one.
The “normal wear” line is the one that earns its space. Repainting between tenants is a cost of letting a flat, not damage you caused, and it is the most common deduction attempted on tenants who did nothing wrong.
The handover routine that gets it back
Twenty minutes on moving-in day, and it is the highest-return twenty minutes in this entire process.
- Walk the flat with the landlord and write an inventory. Every item of furniture and appliance, with its condition. Both of you sign it, both of you keep a copy. If the landlord’s template has an inventory, correct it rather than accepting it — templates get reused and the last tenant’s sofa may not be this sofa.
- Photograph everything, with the date visible in the file metadata. Every room wide, then close-ups of anything already marked, scratched, stained or broken. Inside the oven and the fridge. The bathroom sealant. The floor by the balcony door.
- Photograph the meters. Electricity, water where it is individually metered, gas. Write the readings into the inventory as well. Utilities at handover is the full version of why.
- Note what is missing or broken and ask for it in writing — either fixed by a date, or accepted as pre-existing. “He said he’d fix the boiler” is not a record.
- Send the landlord the photographs in a message the same day. Now the evidence has a timestamp neither of you controls.
Do the identical routine in reverse on the day you leave, in the landlord’s presence where possible, and get a signed line saying the flat was handed back and the meters read.
When it does not come back
In rough order of what to try:
Ask for the itemisation. Not the money — the list. A deduction a landlord cannot itemise is usually a deduction they will drop, and an itemised one tells you what you are actually arguing about.
Put the evidence beside it. The dated photographs of the thing being charged for, as it was on day one. This resolves most of these.
Decide whether the sum is worth the fight. A small-claims route exists and goes through the courts, with a filing cost and a timeline measured in months rather than weeks. For a month’s rent, an advokat’s opinion on whether you have a case is usually worth the hour; when to pay an advokat is about where that line sits. For a smaller sum, be honest with yourself about the arithmetic — your time has a price too, and the landlord knows it.
One place where you have real leverage, and one where you have none. You have leverage while you are still in the flat and the landlord wants a quiet handover: settling the deposit terms in writing before you give notice is far easier than chasing afterwards. You have very little leverage if the lease was never declared, because the conversation you would need to start involves a landlord who has their own reason to avoid any official process — which is one more cost of the undeclared flat that nobody counts at signature. Why the landlord's tax position becomes your problem has the rest of that list.
What I would actually do
Negotiate the deposit return terms harder than the rent. A landlord who will not move twenty euros on the monthly figure will often agree to a fourteen-day return deadline and an itemisation requirement without thinking about it, because those cost nothing today. They are worth more than the twenty euros, and they are worth a great deal more if the relationship sours.
And pay the two-month deposit where the alternative is a flat whose landlord will not declare the lease. A deposit is money you probably get back. A registration problem is not.
Where the deposit rules actually come from
- Deposit sizes, return practice, commission — market norms with wide variance, no published figure, and they move with the market and with how much the landlord wants you specifically.
- The legal framework for leases and deposits — the Law on Contracts and Torts (Zakon o obligacionim odnosima) and the 2016 Law on Housing and Building Maintenance (Zakon o stanovanju i održavanju zgrada). Neither sets your deposit; your contract does.
- Court filing costs and small-claims timelines — these change and vary by the sum claimed. Get them from an advokat rather than from a blog, including this one.
Not legal advice. The deposit clause you wish you had argued about is always the one you find out about at handover.