2B. The budget process under each statute

For condominiums, the Condominium Act says nothing about the precise budget-adoption procedure, so the recorded declaration and bylaws decide who prepares and adopts the annual budget. The Act assumes a board-adopted, declaration-driven budget, not a negative-option ratification. Under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-102, the association holds an annual meeting on at least 21 days' notice, and at that meeting it presents comprehensive reports of the association's affairs, finances, and budget projections to unit owners.¹² That is a reporting step, not a ratification vote. The Act also separates adopting the budget from levying the assessment. Under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-80(c), the association assesses common expenses that are not specially assessed against the units according to the allocation in the declaration, and it makes those assessments annually or more often if the instruments allow.²⁰

The Condominium Act constrains the board directly in just one place, § 44-3-80(g): for instruments recorded on or after July 1, 2015, a special assessment that exceeds one-sixth of the annual common expense assessment per unit needs the approval of a majority of unit owners, and owners holding a majority of the association vote may disapprove a monthly maintenance fee increase above the Consumer Price Index rate.⁴ During declarant control, § 44-3-101 requires the declarant to prepare an annual operating budget, set the annual assessment, and distribute the budget and notice of assessment under the instruments no later than 30 days after the fiscal year begins; a failure to do so is one of the triggers that lets owners seek control of the association.¹⁰

For opt-in planned communities, the POAA is just as silent on the budget-adoption mechanics, leaving them to the recorded declaration and bylaws, and it adds no negative-option ratification step. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-230 mirrors the condominium meeting structure: an annual meeting on at least 21 days' notice, where the association presents comprehensive reports of its affairs, finances, and budget projections to lot owners.¹³ O.C.G.A. § 44-3-225 governs how the association assesses and allocates expenses and confirms that no lot owner can escape assessment liability, but it sets no statutory approval threshold for the budget or for special assessments, so the declaration controls.¹⁴

As with condominiums, § 44-3-232.1 puts a declarant-control obligation on the declarant to prepare and distribute the annual operating budget and notice of assessment, and owners can enforce it through a takeover action.¹¹ Neither statute requires owner ratification of the budget. The board adopts it under the governing documents and then levies the assessment.

2C. The opt-in mechanism, non-opt-in communities, and the corporate-law overlay

A planned community comes under the POAA only by an affirmative election. Under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-222, a development enters the Act when the declaration — or an amendment to an existing declaration — expressly submits the property to the Act and conforms the instrument to it.² When a community elects coverage, the biggest change is the automatic statutory lien for assessments under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-232, which attaches without a separately recorded claim of lien and brings with it the Act's collection, late-charge, interest, and amendment machinery.²¹ The budget-adoption mechanics, though, do not move: the POAA adds no statutory ratification step, so adoption stays declaration-driven before and after the opt-in.

Planned communities that never opt in answer to their recorded covenants and the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code (O.C.G.A. § 14-3-101 et seq.), with no HOA-specific statutory budget mechanism at all.¹ The Nonprofit Corporation Code is a corporate-formality code, not an HOA statute. It supplies the scaffolding for directors, officers, member meetings, notice, and recordkeeping, but it sets no budget-approval threshold and grants no assessment authority.²² For a non-opt-in community, the budget process lives entirely in the declaration and bylaws, backed by general corporate-governance duties.

Section 3: Budget-adjacent obligations

Reserves in the budget

Neither the Condominium Act nor the POAA imposes a statutory reserve-study requirement or a minimum level of reserve funding.¹⁷ The Condominium Act mentions reserves in its declarant-control restrictions (§ 44-3-80(d)) and requires the first residential resale disclosure to itemize reserves (§ 44-3-111), but it does not require funding any particular amount.¹⁸ The declaration and the board's own judgment govern how deep the reserves run and how often the association studies them.

Special assessments

For condominiums, § 44-3-80(g) sets a statutory threshold for instruments recorded on or after July 1, 2015: a special assessment that exceeds one-sixth of the annual common expense assessment per unit needs majority owner approval.⁴ For opt-in planned communities, the POAA sets no statutory special-assessment threshold; § 44-3-225 allocates such assessments but leaves approval to the declaration.¹⁴ For non-opt-in communities, the declaration alone controls.

Assessment increase limits

Outside the condominium monthly-maintenance-fee provision in § 44-3-80(g)(2), which lets owners holding a majority of the vote disapprove an increase above the CPI rate, Georgia sets no statutory percentage cap on assessment increases under either statute.⁴ For planned communities, and for general operating-budget increases, the declaration sets the cap, if there is one.

Financial review, audit, and disclosure tied to the budget cycle

Neither statute requires an independent audit. The Condominium Act requires comprehensive reports of the association's affairs, finances, and budget projections at the annual meeting (§ 44-3-102).¹² The POAA requires the same annual reporting (§ 44-3-230) and separately requires the association to keep detailed and accurate financial records, including itemized records of all receipts and expenditures (§ 44-3-231(d)).¹⁹ Non-opt-in communities are bound only by their declaration and the recordkeeping defaults of the Nonprofit Corporation Code.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Two recent measures bear on how Georgia associations fund and administer their budgets — one signed in 2026 that reworks collection mechanics, and one from 2024 that reshaped enforcement.

B. Recent appellate rulings

No decision of the Georgia Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court of Georgia in the past 36 months squarely interprets the budget-adoption or assessment-approval provisions of the Condominium Act or the POAA. The recent condominium appeals in that window have turned on tort, expert-testimony, and rule-enforcement questions rather than budget or assessment mechanics.²⁸ One older case still shapes the landscape: in Deerlake Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Brown, 361 Ga. App. 860, 864 S.E.2d 202 (Ga. Ct. App. Oct. 26, 2021) (No. A21A1090), the court found it unreasonable for the association to fine an owner $80,225 over an unrepaired mailbox instead of using self-help. That decision prompted HB 220, but it falls outside the 36-month window and concerned enforcement remedies, not the budget.²⁹

C. Active legislative debates

The main active development is the staged rollout of SB 406, whose registration, payment-application, and foreclosure-threshold provisions take effect January 1, 2027. No pending proposal would adopt a negative-option budget ratification model or a statutory reserve mandate.²³

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Georgia is a comprehensive-condominium, opt-in-planned-community, non-UCIOA state. Its condominium statute is prescriptive on assessments, meetings, and declarant turnover, yet neither it nor the POAA imports the negative-option budget ratification of the UCIOA family, under which a board-proposed budget takes effect unless a supermajority of owners rejects it.⁵

Georgia also parts ways with California's Davis-Stirling Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 5605(b)), under which a board "may not impose a regular assessment that is more than 20 percent greater than the regular assessment for the association's preceding fiscal year or impose special assessments which in the aggregate exceed 5 percent of the budgeted gross expenses" without majority-quorum member approval, and with Hawaii, which under HRS § 514B-148 requires condominium budgets to include estimated replacement reserves based on a reserve study that an independent preparer reviews or updates at least every three years.³⁰

For a multi-state operator entering Georgia, the opt-in structure comes first. Whether a planned community's declaration has expressly submitted it to the POAA is the threshold fact, because it decides whether the statutory lien and collection machinery apply or whether the community runs on its covenants and the Nonprofit Corporation Code alone.

Federal frameworks — including the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule — apply to Georgia associations no matter what the state budget framework says.

Federal tax law adds one real complication to Georgia's board-adopted, declaration-driven budget model. Under Rev. Rul. 70-604, an association that wants to apply a fiscal year's excess assessments over expenses to the following year's assessments, or refund the excess to members, rather than treat it as taxable income on the association's federal return, needs an actual, documented vote of the membership — not just board action — and the IRS treats it as a one-year carryover rather than a standing practice.³¹ That federal requirement sits on top of Georgia's own budget model rather than replacing it: neither the Condominium Act nor the POAA gives owners a ratification vote over the operating budget itself, but the excess-assessment tax election is a separate action that only the membership, not the board, can take. The same logic reaches Georgia's special-assessment provisions — the § 44-3-80(g) threshold for condominiums and the declaration-governed process under § 44-3-225 for planned communities — because a special assessment earmarked and kept segregated for a specific capital improvement can qualify as a tax-free contribution to the association's capital under Rev. Ruls. 75-370 and 75-371, rather than taxable income.³² HOA Weekly's federal taxation coverage tracks the annual Form 1120/Form 1120-H filing choice and these revenue rulings in full.