“We already have a manager, so we do not need anybody.”
We hear that sentence often enough that it is worth a whole article, because it is usually true and almost always about a different job from the one the speaker has in mind.
Croatian buildings with more than one owner come with two roles built in, neither of which is a service to you as an individual owner. A third role, the one most foreign owners actually need, does not exist by default at all.
Both statutory roles are defined in the Act on the Management and Maintenance of Buildings (Zakon o upravljanju i održavanju zgrada, NN 152/2024), in force since 1 January 2025. The responsible ministry also publishes a guide for building managers.
The building manager: upravitelj
A building in shared ownership has a manager. This is a company, appointed by the co-owners, and its job is the common parts: the roof, the façade, the stairwell, the risers, the lift, the shared installations. It collects the reserve fund contributions, commissions work on the common parts, and keeps the accounts for all of that.
What it is not is a service to your apartment. The manager has no duty to look at your flat, no key to it, no view on whether your terrace door is leaking, and no obligation to tell you anything about the inside of the property you own. A leak from your bathroom into the flat below is your problem; a leak from the roof into your ceiling is theirs.
Owners routinely assume the manager will notice a problem in an empty apartment. There is nobody in that role.
The co-owners’ representative: predstavnik suvlasnika
The second role is a person, not a company: one of the owners, elected by the others, who represents the co-owners towards the manager and signs off decisions on their behalf.
This matters to a foreign owner for a reason that has nothing to do with maintenance. This is where decisions about your building get made, how the reserve fund is spent, whether the façade is renovated this decade, what happens about the roof. Decisions are taken by co-ownership share, and an owner who is never present and never reads the post sent to the property has, in practice, no vote at all.
If you have never heard from your representative, that is not a sign that nothing is happening. It is a sign that your post is going somewhere you are not reading, which is the problem described in the first hundred days after buying.
The caretaker: the role that is not automatic
Neither of the two roles above looks after your property. Nobody checks whether the shutter survived the storm, whether the boiler is leaking, whether the terrace drain is blocked with pine needles, whether the letter on the mat needs answering within fifteen days.
In a country where most owners live in the building, that gap does not exist, because they can see their own front door. For a property used three weeks a year by somebody who lives two countries away, the gap is the whole problem.
That third role is what we do. It is worth being precise about what it is and is not:
| Building manager | Representative | Caretaker | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appointed by | Co-owners collectively | Elected by co-owners | You, individually |
| Responsible for | Common parts | Representing co-owners | Your property |
| Holds your keys | No | No | Yes |
| Reports to you | No | No | Yes |
| Legal standing | Statutory | Statutory | Contractual |
The last row is the one to hold on to. A caretaker has no legal standing. We are not a property manager in the legal sense, not an agent, and not a booking platform. What we have is a contract with you and a key.
Why the distinction is getting more useful, not less
Two developments have made the difference between these roles matter more than it did.
The first is that obligations attaching to the property have multiplied. The annual property tax, the registration number for anyone renting out, the existing eVisitor and tourist tax duties, all of them are addressed to the owner, all of them carry deadlines, and none of them is the building manager’s job.
The second is that more of it is decided by post and by decision rather than by conversation. A system that assumes the owner is reachable at the property does not degrade gracefully when the owner is not.
What to ask if you are not sure what you have
Who is our building’s manager, and what does our contract with them cover? The answer will be narrower than you expect.
Who is our representative, and how do they reach me? If the honest answer is “the letterbox at the flat”, fix that.
What is the reserve fund at, and what is it earmarked for? This is money you have already paid. Owners who never ask discover the answer when a façade renovation is announced.
Who looks at the inside of my property, and how often? If there is no answer, that is the gap.
How we handle it
We work for you and only for you. That means keys held with a written log, inspections to a fixed checklist with photographs and a date, post opened and forwarded, and trades instructed and supervised once you have agreed the quote.
Where something is genuinely the building manager’s responsibility, our job is to establish that, document it, and put it in front of the right person rather than quietly paying for it out of your pocket. The distinction between “your roof” and “the building’s roof” is worth real money, and it is hard to argue from abroad without photographs.
What we are not is a substitute for either statutory role, and we will say so plainly rather than letting the word “management” do work it should not.
This article describes the roles involved in Croatian shared-ownership property in general terms and is not legal advice. The duties of a building manager and of a co-owners’ representative are set by the Act on the Management and Maintenance of Buildings (NN 152/2024); what governs in your case is the legislation in force together with your building’s own agreements. For questions about your position we refer you to an independent Croatian lawyer, without taking a commission.