Georgia HOA Estoppel & Resale

Section 1: Overview — Estoppel and resale disclosure in Georgia

Georgia doesn't use a Florida-style "estoppel certificate." At a condominium unit sale, the load-bearing document is the association's statement of unpaid assessments under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-109(d), which the association must furnish within five business days of a written request, and which binds the association once issued.¹ A separate first-sale seller disclosure under § 44-3-111 applies to the first bona fide sale of a unit for residential occupancy, not to ordinary owner-to-owner resales.³ Read together with § 44-3-80(e), the statement is the mechanism that caps a buyer's exposure: a grantee isn't liable for unpaid assessments in excess of the figure stated.⁴ The correct Georgia terms are the "statement of unpaid assessments" and the § 44-3-111 seller disclosure, not a UCIOA resale certificate, which Georgia never adopted.¹ This statutory regime is condominium-only; planned communities are covered only if they expressly opted into the Property Owners' Association Act, which has a parallel statement at § 44-3-232(d).^2,5 The mechanic that matters most is the five-business-day clock and its consequence: if the association misses it, the assessment lien is extinguished as to that purchaser or lender.¹ Nationally, Georgia is a non-uniform statutory-disclosure state with a narrow, binding statement instrument, distinct from UCIOA resale-certificate states like Alaska, from hard-mandate Florida, and from CC&R-only states with no statute at all. The sections ahead lay out the statute, the transaction, recent legislative activity, and Georgia's national position.

Section 2: The statutory requirements

2A. The Georgia Condominium Act statement and first-sale disclosure

The governing statute is the Georgia Condominium Act, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-70 et seq., a non-uniform Georgia enactment.¹ Two distinct instruments matter, and conflating them is the most common error. First, the resale instrument is the statement of unpaid assessments under § 44-3-109(d). Any unit owner, mortgagee, contract purchaser, or prospective lender is entitled, on written request delivered to the association's registered office, to a statement from the association or its management agent setting forth the amount of assessments past due and unpaid, together with late charges and interest, against the unit.¹ The association must furnish it within five business days.¹ The association may charge a fee not exceeding $10.00, and only if the condominium instruments so provide; there's no Florida-style indexed cap.¹ Second, and separately, § 44-3-111 governs only the first bona fide sale of each residential unit for residential occupancy, whether the seller is the declarant, the association, or any other person.³ That first-sale disclosure requires the seller to furnish an enumerated package — floor plan, declaration and amendments, articles and bylaws, any ground lease, management contracts exceeding one year, the estimated or actual budget, recreational-facility leases, and a statement of the seller's commitment to build additional units — and it gives the buyer a right to void the contract until at least seven days after delivery.³ A nonrefundable deposit not exceeding $25.00 may be required for that package.³ Because § 44-3-111 reaches only the first sale, Georgia has no separate owner-to-owner statutory resale certificate: on a resale, the buyer's statutory protection comes from the § 44-3-109(d) statement, and everything else — declaration, budget, minutes — is delivered by contract, not by a resale-certificate mandate.^1,3 This regime is condominium-only. Planned communities have no condominium resale certificate; their disclosure runs through the POAA statement or the declaration.⁵

2B. Required contents and the disclosure package

The statutory content of the § 44-3-109(d) statement is narrow and financial: the amount of assessments past due and unpaid, together with applicable late charges and interest, against the specific unit.¹ That figure is the financial heart of a Georgia closing, because it's the payoff number the closing agent uses and, under § 44-3-80(e), the ceiling on the buyer's inherited liability.^1,4 The § 44-3-111 first-sale package runs broader and document-heavy, enumerating the floor plan, the declaration and each amendment, the articles and bylaws, any ground lease, management contracts exceeding one year, the estimated or actual operating budget, recreational-facility leases, and the seller's commitment to build additional units.³ On a resale, a selling owner and buyer typically still want the declaration, bylaws, rules, current budget, and recent minutes, but no statute compels a resale package, so those items move by contract.³ The certificate concept that buyers search for is real in function: the § 44-3-109(d) statement is how a buyer and closing agent learn the exact payoff and confirm there's no larger hidden balance before closing.¹ For a planned community, the equivalent figure comes from the POAA statement of amounts due under § 44-3-232(d) if the association opted in, or from a declaration-based statement of account if it did not, not from any statutory certificate.⁵

2C. Binding effect, remedies, and scope

The binding effect is explicit for condominiums. The information in the § 44-3-109(d) statement binds the association and every unit owner.¹ Section 44-3-80(e) completes the protection: where a grantor or grantee requests a statement under § 44-3-109, the grantee and successors aren't liable for, and the unit isn't subject to a lien for, any unpaid assessments against the grantor in excess of the amount set forth in the statement.⁴ Georgia's statute states no separate dollar cap on that protection; the protection is measured by the stated figure itself.^1,4 The nondelivery remedy is severe for the association: if it fails to mail or furnish the statement within five business days of receipt, the assessment lien is extinguished and of no further effect as to the title or interest acquired by the purchaser or lender in that transaction.¹ For a first-sale buyer, the § 44-3-111 remedy is different: the covered contract stays voidable until at least seven days after the required items are delivered.³ On scope, § 44-3-109(d) and § 44-3-80(e) reach condominiums under the Condominium Act; non-condominium planned communities fall under the opt-in POAA, whose § 44-3-232(d) statement mirrors the five-business-day rule, the lien-extinguishment consequence, the binding effect, and the $10.00 fee ceiling, and whose § 44-3-225 supplies the parallel excess-amount protection.^5,6 The Condominium Act doesn't scale the § 44-3-109(d) statement obligation down for smaller condominiums; the statement duty applies without a unit-count threshold.¹

Section 3: The resale transaction in practice

A. Requesting the statement

For a condominium, the request may come from a unit owner, a mortgagee, a person who has executed a purchase contract, or a lender considering a loan secured by the unit, which covers the closing attorney or title company acting for those parties.¹ The request must be in writing, delivered to the registered office of the association, and must state the address to which the statement is to be directed.¹ That written, properly delivered request is the trigger that starts the statutory clock. Planned communities aren't subject to § 44-3-109 unless they opted into the POAA, in which case § 44-3-232(d) supplies an identical request mechanism; otherwise the declaration governs.⁵

B. The statutory clock and delivery

The clock starts on the association's receipt of the written request and runs five business days.¹ The statement is furnished by mail or other delivery to the address specified in the request.¹ If the association is late, the pending sale is protected at the association's expense: the assessment lien is extinguished as to the interest the purchaser or lender acquires in that transaction, so the buyer takes free of the association's prior-assessment lien.¹ The same five-business-day trigger and lien-extinguishment consequence apply to POAA lots under § 44-3-232(d).⁵

C. Fees and refunds

The association may charge a fee not exceeding $10.00, and only if the condominium instruments so provide.¹ Georgia imposes no indexed or Florida-style dollar cap beyond that figure, and it sets no separate ceiling for a rush.¹ The statute doesn't address an expedited or rush fee, or a refund if the sale doesn't close; both stay silent.¹ The POAA statement carries the same $10.00 ceiling.⁵

D. Consequences and the binding effect

Once the statement issues, the association can't later collect from the purchaser assessment amounts above those disclosed, because the stated figure is binding and caps the grantee's liability under § 44-3-80(e).^1,4 The statute's principal enforcement lever for a late or missing statement is lien extinguishment, not a separate statutory damages standard; § 44-3-109 sets no distinct monetary-penalty formula for an erroneous statement beyond the binding effect and lien consequence.¹ For a first-sale transaction, the buyer's contract-cancellation right under § 44-3-111 remains available until at least seven days after delivery of the required documents.³

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Georgia produced one enacted measure in the past 24 months that affects the statute housing the resale statement, though it changed the underlying lien rather than the statement mechanism itself.

B. Recent Georgia appellate rulings

No Georgia appellate decision in the past 36 months squarely construes the binding effect of the § 44-3-109(d) statement of unpaid assessments or the § 44-3-80(e) excess-liability protection. The binding-effect and lien-extinguishment provisions remain settled statutory text that recent appellate opinions haven't reinterpreted.⁸ The Court of Appeals has decided condominium and POA collection and enforcement matters in this window, including disputes over attorney-fee proof and payment allocation, but those turn on fee reasonableness and assessment calculation rather than on the resale statement's disclosure or binding effect.⁸ For resale-disclosure purposes, the operative law is therefore the statute itself, not recent case law.

C. Active legislative debates

Bills in the 2025-2026 session continued to address POAA opt-in procedures and association governance rather than resale disclosure, and no active proposal would impose a statutory resale-certificate mandate, an indexed statement-fee cap, or alignment with later uniform-act resale amendments.⁷

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Georgia sits between the main resale-disclosure camps. Hard-mandate states, led by Florida, require statutory estoppel certificates on short business-day clocks (Florida requires issuance within 10 business days) with CPI-indexed fee caps; the Florida cap, raised by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation in 2022, runs to $299.00 for preparing an estoppel certificate, $119.00 for an expedited request, and up to $179.00 more where the unit is delinquent (Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8) for condominiums and § 720.30851 for HOAs).⁹ Detailed-disclosure states, led by California, require a statutory resale package of enumerated documents (Davis-Stirling, Cal. Civ. Code § 4525 et seq.). UCIOA resale-certificate states such as Alaska, Colorado, and Washington require a resale certificate with a short turnaround, a reasonable fee, and binding effect. CC&R-only jurisdictions have no statutory mechanism at all. Georgia is a non-uniform statutory-disclosure state: its Condominium Act carries a narrow but binding statement of unpaid assessments (§ 44-3-109(d)) and an excess-liability cap (§ 44-3-80(e)), plus a separate first-sale disclosure (§ 44-3-111), but no full owner-to-owner resale certificate.^1,4,3 For a multi-state operator entering Georgia, the practical implication is to build workflow around the five-business-day statement and the $10.00 ceiling rather than assuming a UCIOA-style certificate exists. Georgia has left its condominium resale-disclosure provisions unchanged in recent sessions; the 2026 SB 406 changes reach the POAA lien, not the statement mechanism.⁷

HOA Weekly's Georgia Estoppel and Resale coverage updates quarterly as the legislature, the Georgia Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of Georgia act. Federal frameworks also apply to Georgia associations regardless of the state rules, notably the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act where a disclosed balance is being collected, plus the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule.

Footnotes

1. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-109 (Georgia Condominium Act; statement of unpaid assessments; five business days; lien extinguishment; binding effect; $10.00 fee) official code text ↩
2. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-220 et seq. (Georgia Property Owners' Association Act; opt-in) official code text ↩
3. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-111 (first bona fide sale disclosure; seven-day voidability; document package; $25 deposit) official code text ↩
4. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-80(e) (grantee not liable for assessments in excess of the amount stated) official code text ↩
5. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-232(d) (POAA statement of amounts due; five business days; lien extinguishment; $10.00 fee) official code text ↩
6. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-225 (POAA grantee liability and excess-amount protection) official code text ↩
7. Georgia General Assembly, SB 406 (2025-2026 Regular Session; signed May 12, 2026; effective Jan. 1, 2027, Sec. 7 effective July 1, 2026) bill page and status history ↩
8. Court of Appeals of Georgia decisions, 2025 term index published opinions ↩
9. Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8) (Florida condominium estoppel certificate; 10-business-day issuance; CPI-indexed fee cap) Florida Statutes ↩