Two changes that run the association's way

SB 406 is described everywhere as a homeowner-protection statute, and in the main it is. Section 5 contains two amendments that are not, and neither has been widely reported.

The lien now lasts six years, not four. The final sentence of § 44-3-232(c) previously provided that the lien for assessments lapses “four years after the assessment or installment first became due and payable.” The Act strikes “four” and inserts “six.” That is a fifty-percent extension of the window in which a Georgia association can enforce an assessment lien, embedded in a bill passed as a homeowner victory.

The association's bid is now capped — and confirmed. The old text let the association bid and acquire the lot at foreclosure “unless prohibited by the instrument.” The new text reads: “the association shall have the power to bid up to the amount of the lien on the lot at any foreclosure sale and to acquire, hold, lease, encumber, and convey the same.”

Read one way that is a limit on how high an association may bid. Read another, it settles that Georgia associations may still bid at all — something an earlier draft of SB 406 would have prohibited outright. The superseded version circulated at legis.ga.gov carries in its caption a promise “to prohibit bidding at foreclosure sales by property owners' associations and related individuals and entities.” No such prohibition survives in the enacted law.

It does not reach Georgia condominiums at all

Worth stating plainly, because coverage has consistently described SB 406 as changing foreclosure law for “homeowners', property owners' and condominium associations.” On the collection provisions, that is wrong.

Section 5 amends § 44-3-232, which sits in Article 6 of Chapter 3 of Title 44 — the Property Owners' Association Act. And § 44-3-235(b) provides that the POA Act “shall not apply to associations created pursuant to Article 3 of this chapter, the ‘Georgia Condominium Act,’” save for a narrow mixed-use exception.

A Georgia condominium association's assessment lien and foreclosure rules live in Article 3, and they were not amended — not by this Act, and not by any other act signed in the 2025 or 2026 sessions.

So for a Georgia condominium owner, from 1 January 2027:

• the $4,000 / twelve-month threshold does not apply;
• the 60-day notice and its statutory cure right do not apply;
• the exclusion of fines from the lien calculation does not apply; and
• the six-year lien lapse does not apply either — which cuts the owner's way.

What a condominium association does get is the whole of new Chapter 43-17A: registration, the $100 annual fee, ten-year records retention, state examination, the complaint desk with its automatic stay, the payment waterfall in § 43-17A-8 and the twelve owner rights in § 43-17A-7. Section 43-17A-1(6) names “condominium development” expressly and reaches “associations formed pursuant to Articles 3 and 6.”

The payment waterfall matters here, because it is the one piece of relief that does cross the line: from January a condominium owner's payment must be applied to regular assessments first and fines last, whatever the declaration says.

What the section still does not change

Georgia's association foreclosure remains judicial. Section 44-3-232(c) requires “an action, judgment, and court order for foreclosure in the same manner as other liens for the improvement of real property,” subject to superior liens and encumbrances, and expressly preserves the rights of holders of superior liens. Nothing in SB 406 creates a power of sale for assessment liens.

Nor does the Act touch § 44-3-232(d), the statement-of-amounts-due provision, under which an association that fails to furnish a statement within five business days of a qualifying request extinguishes its lien as against the purchaser or lender in that transaction. That remains one of the sharpest traps in Georgia association practice and it is unchanged.

The procedural risks the statute does not fix

Two 2025-26 Georgia appellate decisions show that the association's exposure in a foreclosure is not mainly about thresholds.

In Hale v. ASBM Investments, LLC, No. A25A1209 (Ga. Ct. App. 31 Oct. 2025), a Jonesboro homeowner lost her home over $28,824.68 in assessments. The Court of Appeals accepted that the sale was procedurally defective — it “was not conducted by a sheriff or a coroner, but rather by Meadows, a private individual,” contrary to O.C.G.A. § 9-13-161(a) — and she still lost, because a debtor seeking to set aside a foreclosure must first tender what is owed, and non-compliance with foreclosure procedures does not excuse the tender.²

In Smart Venture Capital, LLC v. River Mansions Property Association, Inc., No. A26A0540 (Ga. Ct. App. 21 Apr. 2026), an association's judicial foreclosure cancelled a lender's security deed — and the whole judgment was set aside because service by certified mail was never perfected: the receipt “does not reflect a postmark” and though it “appears to reflect a stamp from a private postage meter, it contains no mark from the United States Post Office.”³

What to watch next

The interaction between the new threshold and the payment-priority rule in § 43-17A-8. From January, owner payments must be applied to regular assessments first and fines last — while only regular assessments count toward the foreclosure threshold. Together those two provisions mean a partial-paying owner's regular-assessment arrears will shrink even as the fine balance grows, and the association's route to the courthouse closes rather than opens. That combination, more than the dollar figure, is what changes Georgia collections practice.