Georgia HOA Director Qualifications

Section 1: Overview — Who can serve on an HOA or condominium board in Georgia

Start with the basic question: who decides who can serve on a Georgia HOA or condominium board? In Georgia, the governing documents and the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code do most of the work. Two property statutes sit on top of them — the Georgia Condominium Act, which is mandatory for condominiums, and the opt-in Georgia Property Owners’ Association Act (POAA) — but they reach only declarant turnover and one narrow entity-owner eligibility scenario. Neither statute imposes a certification requirement, a term limit, or any automatic disqualification of delinquent owners or people with criminal histories.¹ The Georgia Condominium Act, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-70 et seq., governs condominiums automatically. The POAA, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-220 et seq., governs a planned community only if the association affirmatively elected in.² A planned community that never opted in falls back on its recorded covenants, the Nonprofit Corporation Code if it incorporated, and common law.³ All of this puts Georgia among the light-touch states. Compare Florida, which by statute requires director education, sets term limits, and disqualifies certain felons and delinquent owners, and California, which makes association membership a mandatory director qualification.^{4, 5} The sections below trace where each rule comes from, what the two property statutes actually do, and how a manager or attorney should vet a candidate or challenge a sitting director.

Section 2: Where director qualifications come from

2A. The two statutes and the opt-in structure

Two property statutes sit at the top of the analysis, and they are separate. The Georgia Condominium Act, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-70 et seq. (Title 44, Chapter 3, Article 3), governs every condominium created under it, and it is mandatory.¹ The POAA, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-220 et seq. (Title 44, Chapter 3, Article 6, enacted in 1994), is opt-in. Under § 44-3-222, a development enters the Act only when its declaration states “an affirmative election to be so governed,” executed by all owners of the submitted property at recording; a pre-existing community can opt in later by amending its declaration under § 44-3-235.^{2, 6} The POAA does not reach associations created under the Condominium Act, and the two articles should not be cross-applied.⁷ Hold onto that opt-in point, because it is the single most consequential Georgia-specific fact: a manager cannot assume the POAA governs any given HOA.

On board membership, each statute does two narrow things. First, each limits declarant control and provides for turnover, which we take up below. Second, each carries a single conditional eligibility provision — the Condominium Act at § 44-3-104 and the POAA at § 44-3-229, the entity-owner rules discussed in Section 3.^{8, 9} Neither statute imposes a certification or education requirement, a term limit, or an automatic disqualification of delinquent owners or people with felony convictions. Those screens, where they exist, come from the governing documents.

2B. The corporate-law layer: the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code

Most Georgia associations incorporate as nonprofit membership corporations under the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code, O.C.G.A. § 14-3-101 et seq. (Title 14, Chapter 3), and its director provisions sit in the § 14-3-8xx range.¹⁰ The Code supplies the corporate baselines that fill the gaps the property statutes and the documents leave open. The board must consist of one or more natural persons, with the number fixed in or in accordance with the articles or bylaws (§ 14-3-803). Director terms default to one year absent a contrary provision, and directors may serve successive terms (§ 14-3-805). Staggered terms are allowed (§ 14-3-806). And members may remove directors they elected, with or without cause, subject to the meeting and vote conditions in § 14-3-808.^{11, 12, 13, 14} The Code also sets the standard of care for directors at § 14-3-830.¹⁵ Think of the Code as corporate scaffolding, not an HOA-specific qualification statute. It tells an association how to organize a board and how members can unseat a director — not who is substantively eligible to run.

2C. The declaration, covenants, and bylaws

The real source of candidate eligibility screens is the recorded declaration or covenants and the bylaws. Member-or-owner status, residency, a minimum age, and good-standing or current-on-assessments requirements, where they apply, are documentary, not statutory. The order of precedence differs by track. For a condominium, the Condominium Act controls, then the declaration and bylaws, then Nonprofit Corporation Code defaults, then board-adopted rules.¹ For an opted-in planned community, the POAA controls, then the declaration and bylaws, then corporate defaults, then rules.² For a planned community that never opted in, the recorded covenants and bylaws control, then corporate defaults, then rules, with no overlay from either property statute.³ So a manager has to do two things first: determine the community type and, for a planned community, find out whether the POAA was elected. Only then read the governing documents against the applicable layer.

Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

A. Eligibility to serve

Whether a director must be a member or lot owner is, in Georgia, almost always a documentary question — answered by the declaration or bylaws, not by statute. The one statutory wrinkle is the entity-owner provision, and even that is a documentary-trigger rule, not a freestanding screen. Under the Condominium Act, § 44-3-104, “if the condominium instruments provide that any member of the board of directors or any officer of the association must be a unit owner,” then the term “unit owner” is read to include a shareholder, director, officer, partner in, or trustee of an entity that owns a unit; and an individual who qualifies only through that affiliation “shall be deemed to have disqualified himself from continuing in office if he ceases to have any such affiliation.”⁸ The POAA carries the equivalent rule for opted-in planned communities at § 44-3-229.⁹ Both operate only where the instrument first requires owner status. They expand who counts as an owner, then build in self-disqualification once the qualifying relationship ends. Residency, age, and good-standing requirements — and the treatment of co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives — flow from the governing documents and, for entity owners, from these two provisions.

B. Disqualification and removal

Georgia imposes no statutory bar on a delinquent owner, or on a person with a criminal history, serving as a director. Any such disqualification is documentary — found in the declaration or bylaws — and it applies across condominiums, opted-in planned communities, and never-opted-in planned communities alike, according to what each community adopted. Conflict-of-interest limits on service are documentary too, backed by the general fiduciary standard in the Nonprofit Corporation Code. Owner-initiated removal of a director, for an incorporated association, runs through O.C.G.A. § 14-3-808. Members may remove a director they elected, with or without cause, but only at a meeting called for that purpose, and only if the votes cast for removal would have been enough to elect the director.¹⁴ The governing documents can add or refine removal grounds — including removal for missed meetings, which § 14-3-808 expressly allows if the articles or bylaws provided for it at the start of the term.¹⁴ The mechanics of the removal vote, notice, and balloting are election matters, taken up separately.

C. Board composition and terms

The minimum and maximum number of directors comes from the governing documents, backstopped by the Nonprofit Corporation Code default that a board consist of one or more natural persons, with the number fixed in or in accordance with the articles or bylaws (§ 14-3-803).¹¹ Term length is documentary as well. Absent a contrary provision, the Code default is a one-year term, with successive terms allowed (§ 14-3-805), and staggered terms are permitted if the articles or a bylaw provide for them (§ 14-3-806).^{12, 13} Georgia sets no statutory term limit; any limit has to come from the documents. Declarant-appointed seats and turnover, by contrast, are statutory for condominiums. Under § 44-3-101, the declarant may appoint and remove directors and officers if the condominium instruments so provide, but that authority expires on the earliest of three events: a time limit stated in the instruments; the date units representing four-fifths of the undivided interests in the common elements have been conveyed to other owners; or seven years after the declaration is recorded for an expandable condominium, three years for a non-expandable one.¹⁶ The POAA carries no equivalent fixed-percentage, fixed-year turnover formula. For an opted-in planned community, declarant control and its termination follow the recorded instrument, which the POAA references rather than supplants.¹⁷

D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Georgia requires no director certification or education, for any community type. There is no Georgia analog to Florida’s rule that an HOA director complete a state-approved education course within 90 days of election or appointment.⁴ Conflict-of-interest disclosure is expected as a matter of fiduciary practice, not as a pre-service screen. The baseline standard of care comes from the Nonprofit Corporation Code, § 14-3-830, which requires a director to act in good faith, with the care an ordinarily prudent person in a like position would exercise, and in a manner the director reasonably believes serves the association’s best interests, supplemented by common law.¹⁵ That duty attaches the moment a director takes office — regardless of community type, and regardless of whether the POAA was elected.

Across all four areas, Georgia’s statutory layer is thin. The concrete eligibility rules originate in the governing documents or the Nonprofit Corporation Code, not in the property statutes — and a rule from another jurisdiction should never be imported where Georgia is silent.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Georgia’s recent activity on this front is a single, consequential bill — and unlike most director-qualification proposals, this one became law.

B. Recent appellate rulings

Here the record is empty, and that is itself the finding. No published decision of the Court of Appeals of Georgia or the Supreme Court of Georgia in the past 36 months squarely addressed director eligibility, disqualification, board composition, or the standard of care for association directors. Recent community-association rulings have turned on covenant enforcement and architectural review, not on who may serve on a board, so there is no qualifying decision to report in this window. Trial-level disputes run through the Georgia Superior Courts, which both property statutes define as the “court” for the county where the development sits, with appeals to the Court of Appeals of Georgia and discretionary review by the Supreme Court of Georgia.²

C. Active legislative debates

For now, the active item is implementation, not new legislation. The Secretary of State is expected to stand up the SB 406 registration and complaint system ahead of the January 1, 2027 effective date, and association counsel are watching to see whether follow-on legislation reaches internal governance — elections or director eligibility — which SB 406 left untouched.¹⁸

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Georgia is a light-touch state for director qualifications. A mandatory condominium statute and an opt-in planned-community statute handle declarant turnover and a single narrow entity-owner eligibility scenario, but eligibility, terms, disqualification, and removal otherwise rest on the governing documents and, for incorporated associations, the Nonprofit Corporation Code. That sets Georgia apart from heavy-touch states. In Florida, Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) caps condominium directors at four consecutive two-year terms absent a supermajority override and disqualifies certain felons and delinquent owners, and Fla. Stat. § 720.3033 requires HOA directors to finish an education course within 90 days of taking office. In California, Civil Code § 5105 makes association membership the mandatory director qualification and permits, but does not require, added disqualifiers such as being current on assessments.^{4, 5} For a multi-state operator, the practical takeaway is simple: in Georgia, ask first whether the planned community opted into the POAA, because that answer sets the statutory backdrop against which the documents are read. Georgia imposes no director certification, education, or term-limit requirement on any community type.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Georgia director-qualifications coverage each quarter, as the General Assembly and the Georgia courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Georgia associations still answer to federal law — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the OTARD rule — in their broader operations.

Footnotes

1. Ga. Code Ann. (O.C.G.A.) § 44-3-70 et seq. (Georgia Condominium Act) ↩
2. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-220 et seq. (Georgia Property Owners’ Association Act); § 44-3-221 (definition of “court” as the superior court); § 44-3-222 (affirmative election to be governed) ↩
3. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-101 et seq. (Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code) ↩
4. Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (condominium director term limits and disqualification of felons and delinquent owners); Fla. Stat. § 720.3033 (HOA director education within 90 days) ↩
5. Cal. Civ. Code § 5105 (membership as mandatory director qualification; optional disqualifiers including current-on-assessments) ↩
6. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-235 (amendment of recorded declaration to opt in) ↩
7. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-234 (POAA inapplicable to associations created under Article 3) ↩
8. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-104 (Georgia Condominium Act; directors and officers; eligibility) ↩
9. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-229 (POAA; directors and officers; eligibility) ↩
10. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-101 et seq. (Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code) ↩
11. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-803 (number of directors) ↩
12. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-805 (terms of directors) ↩
13. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-806 (staggered terms for directors) ↩
14. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-808 (removal of directors elected by members or directors) ↩
15. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-830 (general standards for directors) ↩
16. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-101 (control of association by declarant; surrender of control to unit owners) ↩
17. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-226 (POAA; declarant right to control referenced in the instrument) ↩
18. Ga. SB 406, “Georgia Property Owners’ Bill of Rights Act,” Act 715 (signed May 12, 2026; eff. Jan. 1, 2027; Section 7 eff. July 1, 2026) ↩
19. HOA Alliance, “SB 406 Is Now Law” (May 12, 2026) (reporting scope and the $2,000-to-$4,000 foreclosure-threshold increase) ↩
20. Ga. SB 406, O.C.G.A. §§ 43-17A-3, 43-17A-7 (as enacted) ↩