Georgia enacted eviction-record sealing inside its HOA bill
Georgia enacted eviction-record sealing inside its HOA bill
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation
What happened. The Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act contains one section that has nothing whatever to do with homeowners associations. Section 8 amends O.C.G.A. § 44-7-50 — the landlord-tenant dispossessory statute — to add a new subsection (e) permitting a court to seal eviction records.1
It takes effect 1 January 2027 with the rest of the Act. Section 9(b) carves out only Section 7 for an earlier date, so the sealing provision arrives on the general effective date.
The provision, verbatim
“A court of competent jurisdiction may, upon the filing of a motion and a hearing thereon, order all records of the court relating to a dispossessory proceeding to be made unavailable to the public when the tenant has prevailed in the proceeding resulting in a judgment in favor of such tenant; has satisfied the judgment in full, including the payment of interest and costs; or seven years have lapsed since the filing of a dismissal or a judgment, provided that the judgment is paid in full with interests and costs. Nothing in this Code section shall prevent the landlord from pursuing all amounts due and owing such landlord in a separate action or through collections.”
What it does and does not do
Three qualifications are built into the text and each narrows it considerably.
It is discretionary and it requires a motion. The court “may” order sealing, “upon the filing of a motion and a hearing thereon.” Nothing happens automatically. A tenant who does not know the provision exists gets nothing from it.
There are three qualifying routes, and two require payment. The tenant prevailed; or the judgment is satisfied in full including interest and costs; or seven years have passed since a dismissal or judgment — and even that third route is conditioned on the judgment being “paid in full with interests and costs.” A tenant with an unpaid judgment does not age into eligibility.
The debt survives sealing. The closing sentence preserves the landlord's right to pursue what is owed “in a separate action or through collections.” This is a record-visibility measure, not a discharge.
Why it matters in Georgia
Eviction-record sealing is a housing-policy measure that tenant advocates have pushed in many states, and one that has repeatedly failed as standalone legislation. Its significance in Georgia is about who is affected: the state's dispossessory filings dwarf the number of homeowners in association disputes, and a filing appears on a tenant screening report whether or not the tenant won.
That is the asymmetry the provision addresses. A Georgia tenant who defeated an eviction has, until now, carried the same public record as one who was evicted.
How it got there
The Act's caption flags it, briefly and without emphasis, among a long list: “to provide for records of dispossessory proceedings.” The Office of Legislative Counsel's official summary of Act 715 confirms the amendment in its list of affected Code sections — the Act amends “O.C.G.A. Sections 44-3-222, 44-3-226, 44-3-232, 44-3-235, and 44-7-50.”2
What is striking is the coverage. We could find no press account of SB 406 that mentions the eviction provision, and no community-association client alert that discusses it — reasonably enough, since it does not affect association clients. The result is a renter protection that passed a Georgia legislature with, so far as the public record shows, no public debate about it as a renter protection.
The vehicle explains part of it. SB 406 passed the House 155-10 and cleared the Senate without dissent. Attention was on registration, fines and foreclosure.
Where it touches association work after all
Two places, and both matter to Georgia managers.
Owners who rent out their units. A Georgia condominium or lot owner who leases their property is a landlord, and files dispossessories in their own name. From January their former tenants can move to seal those records on the terms above.
Associations that screen residents. Where governing documents permit an association to review prospective tenants — a common arrangement in Georgia condominiums with leasing restrictions — the screening report is the information source, and a sealed record is not on it. An association whose leasing policy relies on eviction history should expect that history to be less complete.
Note also the interaction with the Act's own complaint provision. Section 43-17A-5 gives standing to “any person residing in an owners' development,” not merely owners. On the text, a tenant in a Georgia covenanted community can complain to the Secretary of State about the association. Section 8 and § 43-17A-5 are the two places where Act 715 reaches renters, and neither was much discussed.
What a tenant would actually have to do
The mechanics are unbuilt, and that is the practical limit on the provision's reach in its first year.
The statute supplies no form, no filing fee treatment, no venue rule beyond “a court of competent jurisdiction,” and no standard for how a court should exercise the discretion it confers. Georgia dispossessories are heard largely in magistrate courts, and magistrate practice varies substantially by county. Whether a Fulton County magistrate and a Camden County magistrate approach a sealing motion the same way is, at this point, unknowable.
Nor does the statute say what “unavailable to the public” means operationally — whether it reaches the electronic docket, the paper file, or data already sold to tenant-screening companies before the order. Records that have already been scraped are not recalled by a Georgia court order.
What to watch next
Whether Georgia legal-aid organisations publicise the provision before January. It is discretionary, motion-driven and unpublicised — the combination that most often produces a statutory right that exists on paper and is used by almost nobody. The counter-case is that Georgia's legal-aid and tenant-advocacy groups have been asking for exactly this for years, and now have it in a place they may not have thought to look.
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