Georgia condominiums get the new HOA registry but none of the collection relief
Georgia condominiums get the new HOA registry but none of the collection relief
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation
What happened. Coverage of Georgia's new community-association statute has consistently described it as reforming the law for “homeowners', property owners' and condominium associations.” On the obligations, that is right. On the protections, it is not.
Read the enacted Act against the Code and a clean split appears: Georgia condominium owners get the whole of the new regulatory burden and almost none of the new collection relief.
The structure of the Act
SB 406 has ten sections. Two do different jobs:
- Section 2 creates a brand-new Chapter 17A of Title 43 — the registration regime, the complaint desk, the payment waterfall, the twelve owner rights.
- Sections 3 through 7 amend four existing Code sections — §§ 44-3-222, 44-3-226, 44-3-232 and 44-3-235 — which contain the foreclosure threshold, the notice period, the lien lapse and the attorney-fee gate.1
Every one of those four sections sits inside Article 6 of Chapter 3 of Title 44, the Property Owners' Association Act. The Act's own drafting confirms it: Section 3 amends Title 44 “in Article 6 of Chapter 3, relating to owners' associations,” and Sections 4, 5 and 6 each open “Said article is further amended.”
The provision that decides it
O.C.G.A. § 44-3-235(b) has been on the books since the POA Act was written:
“This article shall not apply to associations created pursuant to Article 3 of this chapter, the ‘Georgia Condominium Act,’ except to the extent that a property owners' development created under this article includes a condominium, together with other real property, as provided in paragraph (9) of Code Section 44-3-221.”2
Article 3 is the Georgia Condominium Act. Article 6 is the POA Act. They are separate statutes governing separate kinds of association, and § 44-3-235(b) keeps them separate.
But Chapter 17A does reach condominiums
Deliberately and expressly. The new definition at § 43-17A-1(6) reads:
“‘Owners' association’ means a nongovernmental association of participating owners of residential property… comprising a neighborhood, condominium development, common interest community… or group of homeowners or property owners, including, but not limited to, associations formed pursuant to Articles 3 and 6 of Chapter 3 of Title 44.”
“Articles 3 and 6” — both. So a Georgia condominium association must register, pay $100 a year, file its governing documents and a current financial statement, retain ten years of records at a Georgia office, and submit to state examination.
The split, item by item
| Provision, and where it lives | Does it reach a Georgia condominium? |
|---|---|
| Registration, $100 a year, 31 December expiry — § 43-17A-2 | Reaches condominiums. |
| Ten-year records retention at a Georgia office — § 43-17A-2(g) | Reaches condominiums. |
| Secretary of State examination of records — § 43-17A-2(f) | Reaches condominiums. |
| Complaint desk and automatic collection stay — § 43-17A-5 | Reaches condominiums. |
| Payment waterfall: dues first, fines last — § 43-17A-8(a) | Reaches condominiums. |
| Acceleration ban; no refusing a partial payment — § 43-17A-8(b) | Reaches condominiums. |
| The twelve owner rights — § 43-17A-7 | Reaches condominiums. |
| $4,000 / twelve-month foreclosure threshold — § 44-3-232(c) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| Fines excluded from the lien calculation — § 44-3-232(c) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| 60-day notice and statutory cure right — § 44-3-232(c) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| Association bid capped at the amount of the lien — § 44-3-232(c) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| Lien lapse extended from four years to six — § 44-3-232(c) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| Attorney-fee notice, 30 days, itemisation — § 44-3-232(f) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| Judicial reasonableness order on fees — § 44-3-232(g) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
| The new 80% route into the POA Act — § 44-3-235(a)(3) | Does not reach condominiums. POA Act associations only. |
Note the last row. A Georgia condominium cannot use the new 80% submission route to get the protections, because § 44-3-235(b) excludes condominium associations from the article the route leads into.
What condominium owners keep instead
The Condominium Act's own machinery, unchanged. A Georgia condominium association's assessment lien and foreclosure provisions sit in Article 3 and were not amended by SB 406 or by any other act signed in the 2025 or 2026 sessions.
One consequence runs the condominium owner's way and should be said. The six-year lien lapse — a fifty-percent extension of the enforcement window, and the provision in SB 406 that most favours associations — also does not reach condominiums.
Why it probably happened this way
Not, on the evidence, as a policy choice about condominiums. The likelier explanation is legislative history.
Sections 3, 4 and 6 are substantively House Bill 664, “Property owners' associations; development and affirmative election; provisions,” which passed the House on 3 March 2026 and died in Senate Judiciary. That bill was about the POA Act by design. When its text was folded into the SB 406 House substitute on the session's penultimate voting day, it brought its Article 6 scope with it — and Sections 5 and 7 were drafted into the same chain.
Section 2, drafted separately as a new Title 43 chapter, defined its own reach from scratch and reached everybody.
There is corroborating evidence of end-of-session drafting pressure elsewhere in the same Act: its caption promises “binding arbitration” that appears nowhere in the operative text, and Section 7 opens “Said Code section is further amended” when the immediately preceding section amended § 44-3-235 — a section that runs only to subsection (c), while the new subsections are lettered (f) and (g), which fit § 44-3-232's existing (a) through (e) exactly.
What a Georgia condominium board can do
- Prepare to register. Everything in Chapter 17A applies to you: the filing, the fee, the governing documents, the financial statement, the ten-year records duty, the complaint exposure.
- Fix the payment-application settings anyway. Section 43-17A-8(a) crosses the line and binds condominiums. Dues first, fines last, from 1 January 2027.
- Stop accelerating. Section 43-17A-8(b)(2) also crosses the line.
- Do not adopt the POA Act notice and threshold rules by mistake. A management company running one process across a mixed Georgia portfolio will be tempted to apply the 60-day notice and the $4,000 threshold everywhere. Doing so is not unlawful — it is more generous than the Condominium Act requires — but it is a choice, not a duty.
- Check for the mixed-use exception. Section 44-3-235(b) preserves the POA Act where a property owners' development created under Article 6 includes a condominium together with other real property, per § 44-3-221(9). Master-planned Georgia communities with a condominium component may sit on the other side of the line.
What to watch next
Whether a 2027 technical-corrections bill extends Sections 5 and 7 to the Condominium Act. It would be a short amendment, it fits the pattern of a statute passed on the last night of a session, and it is the single clearest gap in Act 715. Nobody has announced one — and no Georgia interim study committee is looking at the subject, because none was created.
Related Georgia HOA Topics
Stay on top of Georgia HOA law
Every week: new Georgia legislation, court rulings, and regulatory developments affecting condos, planned communities, and property managers. Free.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.