Georgia HOA Insurance Requirements

Section 1: Overview — How HOA insurance is regulated in Georgia

Georgia imposes a statutory association-insurance mandate only on condominiums, through the state-specific Georgia Condominium Act, while the Property Owners' Association Act stays opt-in and imposes no comparable scheme — most planned-community coverage runs off the recorded declaration instead. The condominium mandate sits at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107, which requires the association to obtain property and commercial general liability insurance and spells out the property that coverage must reach.¹ The Property Owners' Association Act, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-220 et seq., governs planned communities that expressly submit to it in their declarations, but it holds no association property, liability, proceeds, or deductible scheme; planned-community insurance therefore runs off the CC&Rs plus the corporate scaffolding of the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code.² Because the Condominium Act is a state-specific statute rather than an enactment of the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act or UCIOA, its insurance requirements have to be read from the actual § 44-3-107 text rather than inferred from uniform-act machinery.¹ Neither act mandates fidelity (crime) or directors-and-officers coverage; declarations or lenders drive those instead.⁶ Nationally, Georgia sits between the prescriptive condominium-statute states and the covenant-first states: prescriptive for condominiums, covenant-first for planned communities. The sections ahead lay out what the statute requires, where the planned-community gap sits, and how the declaration, corporate law, and federal overlay fill it.

Section 2: The statutory insurance framework

2A. The condominium insurance mandate

The condominium mandate is O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107, first enacted in 1975 and amended in 1990, 2008, and 2020.¹ Because Georgia adopted only portions of the uniform condominium framework and never enacted the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act or UCIOA, the section reads on its own terms rather than through uniform-act interpretive gloss.¹ Subsection (a) directs that the association "shall obtain" two coverages. First, "[a] property insurance policy or policies affording fire and extended coverage insurance for and in an amount consonant with the full insurable replacement cost, less deductibles, of all buildings and structures within the condominium."³ That coverage has to reach, regardless of unit boundaries, all common and limited common elements, foundations, roofs and roof structures, exterior walls, windows, doors and framing, and convertible space; and, within each unit regardless of who maintains them, the HVAC system serving the unit, all sheetrock and plasterboard walls and ceilings, and floor, wall and ceiling coverings, plumbing and electrical lines and fixtures, built-in cabinetry, and appliances for refrigeration, cooking, dishwashing, and laundry.³ The association may exclude owner-made improvements and structures covered by builder's risk insurance.³ Second, a commercial general liability policy for bodily injury and property damage "in an amount not less than $1 million for a single occurrence and $2 million aggregate."⁴

So the Georgia text does contain a replacement-cost valuation standard and a fixed liability minimum. It doesn't contain other uniform-act features: no "reasonably available" qualifier, no statutory fidelity or D&O command, and no UCIOA-style structured deductible-reallocation-and-proceeds trust scheme. On casualty, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-94 supplies the proceeds and rebuild rule: unless the condominium instruments say otherwise, the association "shall cause the unit to be restored," the owner pays any restoration cost exceeding attributable proceeds, and owners holding two-thirds of the votes may elect not to restore.⁷ Deductibles get addressed in the same section: a reasonable deductible doesn't constitute a failure to insure, and the association may equitably allocate a deductible to affected owners, but the amount allocated to any one unit owner "shall not exceed $5,000.00 per casualty loss."⁷ The 2020 amendment added subsection (c), which confirms that nothing in the section requires water-damage or water-peril coverage and creates a five-business-day disclosure duty for the certificate of insurance on a written water-claim request.⁹ The leading appellate reading, Villa Sonoma Perimeter Summit Condominium Ass'n v. Mainor, held that the association "was not required under the Act to maintain coverage for the water leak at issue" because "fire and extended coverage" doesn't include water damage, and that the § 44-3-94 deductible cap applies only to coverages the statute requires.¹⁰

2B. The planned-community statute and the insurance-mandate gap

The Property Owners' Association Act governs planned communities comprehensively on assessments, liens, voting, amendments, and association powers, but it imposes no association insurance mandate. Its powers-and-duties provision, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-231, lists no obligation to obtain property, liability, fidelity, or D&O coverage.⁵ The Act also runs opt-in: a development answers to it only if the declaration expressly elects in, under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-222, and many Georgia communities never opted in and remain governed by covenants and common law.² For planned communities, association insurance therefore runs off the recorded declaration with no statutory fallback. That matters, because a reader familiar with the condominium statute might wrongly assume parallelism. There is none. On insurance specifically, a Georgia planned community — whether or not it opted into the Property Owners' Association Act — resembles a community in a covenant-primary state. The practical implication is direct: coverage analysis for a planned community starts and ends with the declaration and any lender requirements, not with the Code.

2C. The declaration, corporate law, and the federal and market overlay

For condominiums, the statute serves as the floor and the declaration operates within it: many § 44-3-107 and § 44-3-94 provisions apply "unless otherwise provided in the condominium instruments," so the declaration can allocate deductibles, adjust the proceeds waterfall, and add coverages, but it can't drop below the statutory property and liability requirements.¹ For planned communities, the declaration takes the lead with no overriding insurance statute. Fidelity and D&O coverage carry no statutory mandate under either act; declarations or lenders drive them instead. The Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code, O.C.G.A. § 14-3-101 et seq., supplies corporate scaffolding rather than an insurance command: its indemnification part permits a corporation to indemnify directors and officers and provides that a corporation "may purchase and maintain insurance" on their behalf, but requires neither.⁶ The federal and secondary-market overlay sits separate from state law and frequently exceeds it: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, and NFIP set coverage conditions for loan eligibility and project approval, and it's these lender and federal frameworks, not Georgia statute, that most often drive fidelity, flood, and property decisions — including for planned communities that carry no statutory floor at all. Georgia market conditions add pressure distinct from any mandate: severe convective storm, wind, hail, and tornado losses across the metro Atlanta and upstate counties, hurricane and storm-surge exposure on the coast, and riverine and coastal flood exposure. The Georgia Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner regulates the carriers writing these policies; it doesn't set the coverage an association must buy.⁸

Section 3: Coverage allocation and compliance obligations

A. Association coverage obligations

For condominiums under the Georgia Condominium Act, the master policy must carry fire-and-extended-coverage property insurance at full insurable replacement cost on all buildings and structures, plus commercial general liability of not less than $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate; both run mandatory, and the property scope reaches the statutorily listed unit components.³⁴ For planned communities, no statutory floor exists; the declaration typically requires the association to insure common property at replacement cost and to carry liability coverage, but the obligation stays contractual — CC&Rs, not statute.²

B. Coverage allocation between association and owners

For condominiums, the master policy reaches common elements and the listed unit items, but the association may exclude owner improvements and betterments, and the owner insures personal property and, commonly, interior finishes and upgrades through an individual unit policy — an HO-6; this allocation may be varied by the condominium instruments.³ The error readers make most often: assuming the master policy covers the entire unit interior and all owner improvements. It doesn't. For planned communities, the split between association and owner coverage runs contractual, set entirely by the declaration.² Loss-assessment coverage on an owner's individual policy handles the owner's share of a shared loss.

C. Deductibles, proceeds, and repair-or-replace

For condominiums, § 44-3-94 governs: the association may allocate a reasonable deductible to affected owners up to $5,000 per unit per casualty loss, must restore a damaged unit unless a two-thirds vote elects otherwise, and the owner bears restoration costs exceeding attributable proceeds; these defaults may be varied by the instruments.⁷ Owners face a common-expense assessment for uninsured loss. For planned communities, deductible allocation and rebuild duties run contractual, set by the declaration.²

D. Fidelity, D&O, and disclosure

Fidelity and D&O coverage stay declaration- or lender-driven, not statutory, for both condominiums and planned communities; the Nonprofit Corporation Code permits but doesn't require D&O insurance.⁶ For condominiums, § 44-3-107(c) requires the association, on written request tied to a water claim, to provide its certificate of insurance within five business days, and a parallel duty runs to unit owners.⁹ Under SB 406 (2026), owners in registered associations — condominium and planned-community alike — gain a statutory right to obtain the certificate of insurance once the Act takes effect.¹¹

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

B. Recent appellate rulings

No Georgia appellate decision in the past 36 months resolved association insurance obligations on the merits; the leading authority remains Villa Sonoma Perimeter Summit Condominium Ass'n v. Mainor, 356 Ga. App. 794 (2020), holding that § 44-3-107's fire-and-extended-coverage requirement doesn't compel water-damage coverage.¹⁰

C. Active legislative debates

The active pressure point is the condominium master-policy deductible cap, where SB 230's failed effort to raise the $5,000 per-unit allocation limit to $25,000 is expected to return, and the primary near-term force on Georgia association insurance remains market-driven cost and availability in wind, hail, and coastal-hurricane exposed markets rather than statutory change.¹²

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Georgia occupies a distinctive position among three broad categories of association-insurance regulation. The first covers condominium-statute states built on the Uniform Condominium Act or UCIOA, which impose a Section 3-113 style mandate with replacement-cost valuation, a liability requirement, a "reasonably available" qualifier, and a structured deductible-and-proceeds scheme. The second covers comprehensive non-uniform prescriptive states, notably Florida, whose Condominium Act requires "adequate property insurance...based on the replacement cost of the property to be insured as determined by an independent insurance appraisal," redetermined at least every 36 months, and California, whose Davis-Stirling Act conditions volunteer director and officer immunity on the association carrying general-liability and D&O coverage of at least $500,000 for developments of 100 or fewer separate interests and at least $1 million for larger ones, plus a fidelity-bond mandate.¹⁴¹⁵ The third covers covenant-primary states such as Alabama and Arkansas, where the declaration is the main source of insurance duties. Georgia runs as a hybrid: its condominium statute is state-specific and prescriptive on property and liability, while its Property Owners' Association Act stays opt-in and imposes no insurance scheme, so on insurance a Georgia planned community resembles a covenant-primary community. For a multi-state operator entering Georgia, the practical implication is to run two separate playbooks — a statutory checklist for condominiums and a declaration-driven review for planned communities. Georgia has amended its condominium insurance provisions only at the margins (the 2020 water-peril clarification) and has added no insurance scheme to the Property Owners' Association Act.⁹

HOA Weekly updates its Georgia Insurance Requirements coverage quarterly, tracking the legislature, the Supreme Court of Georgia, and shifts in the property-insurance market. Federal frameworks — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, NFIP, and FHA fair-housing accommodation rules — apply regardless of the state framework, and a fuller treatment of those rules will follow once that coverage is built out.

1. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107, Insurance coverage — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
2. O.C.G.A. §§ 44-3-220 and 44-3-222, Georgia Property Owners' Association Act — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
3. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107(a)(1), property insurance at full insurable replacement cost — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
4. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107(a)(2), commercial general liability of not less than $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
5. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-231, Property Owners' Association Act powers and duties (no insurance mandate) — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
6. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-858 (renumbered 2023), Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code — corporation "may purchase and maintain insurance" for directors and officers — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
7. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-94, damage or destruction of units; restoration; allocation of insurance deductible — Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia General Assembly) ↩
8. Georgia Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner (carrier regulation) ↩
9. HB 1070 (2020), adding O.C.G.A. § 44-3-107(c), water-peril disclosure and certificate-of-insurance duty — Georgia General Assembly ↩
10. Villa Sonoma Perimeter Summit Condominium Ass'n v. Mainor, 356 Ga. App. 794, 849 S.E.2d 226 (2020) (No. A20A1263) ↩
11. SB 406 (2025-2026), Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act, 2026 Ga. Laws Act 715 — Georgia General Assembly ↩
12. SB 230 (2025-2026), condominium insurance deductibles — Georgia General Assembly ↩
13. 1280 West Condominium Ass'n, Inc. v. Allan, No. A25A2111 (Ga. Ct. App. Mar. 12, 2026) ↩
14. Fla. Stat. § 718.111(11)(a), condominium association property insurance based on replacement cost, redetermined at least every 36 months ↩
15. Cal. Civ. Code § 5800(a)(4) (D&O/liability minimums of $500,000 / $1 million) and § 5806 (fidelity bond), Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act ↩