Georgia just doubled the home equity an HOA judgment cannot touch
Georgia just doubled the home equity an HOA judgment cannot touch
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation
What happened. Georgia has more than doubled the amount of home equity a judgment creditor cannot reach. For a community association holding a money judgment for unpaid assessments, fines and attorney's fees, this is the number that decides whether the judgment is collectible.
House Bill 1024 is 2026 Ga. Laws Act 480, signed 11 May 2026 and effective 1 July 2026. It amends O.C.G.A. § 44-13-100(a)(1), Georgia's exemption from levy and sale.1
The new numbers
Verbatim, with the strikes and inserts as enrolled:
“The debtor's aggregate interest, not to exceed
$21,500.00$50,000.00 in value, [in real or personal property used as a residence]… provided, however, that beginning July 1, 2031, and annually thereafter, such exemption shall be revised by being multiplied by the inflation rate of the prior year. In the event title to property used for the exemption… is in one of two spouses who is a debtor, and such property is the primary residence of both spouses, the amount of the exemption hereunder shall be$43,000.00$100,000.00.”
Subparagraph (B) defines the inflation rate as the annual rate determined by the state revenue commissioner, who “may utilize the Consumer Price Index as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
What it changes for an association
Georgia associations have two routes to a delinquent owner's money: the assessment lien, enforced by judicial foreclosure, and an ordinary money judgment, enforced by levy, execution and garnishment.
The homestead exemption governs the second. A judgment creditor levying on a Georgia home must leave the debtor the exempt amount out of the proceeds. Raise the exemption and you shrink the pool of homes worth levying on.
Work through a common case. An owner has a home worth $320,000 with a $290,000 mortgage — $30,000 of equity. Before 1 July 2026, an association could theoretically reach $8,500 of it. Today it can reach nothing, and if the owners are married and both live there, nothing up to $100,000 of equity.
For a great many Georgia homeowners, particularly recent buyers, the money judgment is now uncollectable against the home.
Three levers tightened in fifteen months
This is the part that has gone unremarked, because the changes came in separate bills.
- Lien foreclosure — SB 406 raised the threshold and excluded fines from the calculation, effective 1 January 2027 (for POA Act associations).
- Fee-shifting — SB 406 Section 7 gated attorney's fees behind notice, a 30-day window, itemisation and a judicial reasonableness order, in force since 1 July 2026.
- Judgment execution — HB 1024 doubled the homestead exemption, in force since 1 July 2026.
The fourth lever moved the other way: SB 406 extended the assessment lien's lapse period from four years to six.
What the exemption does not stop
This is easy to overread. Four things remain intact.
The assessment lien is not a judgment lien. The POA Act's lien under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-232 arises from the statute and the declaration, not from a court judgment, and it is enforced by judicial foreclosure of the lien itself. The homestead exemption from levy and sale is a different mechanism. This is the central point, and it is why the change is less devastating to Georgia associations than the headline suggests.
Garnishment of wages and bank accounts is unaffected by the homestead exemption, which protects an interest in a residence. Georgia associations do pursue bank garnishment — as the Fairburn case reported in 2025 showed, where a chemotherapy patient had $828.54 garnished plus a $125 legal fee, overdrawing her account by $855.
The debt survives. An exemption blocks a collection method. It does not extinguish what is owed, and the balance continues to accrue.
It applies to the debtor's residence. An investor-owned lot in a Georgia community, or a unit that is not the owner's primary residence, is not protected by § 44-13-100(a)(1) at all.
What a Georgia board can change
- Check the equity before authorising a money judgment. A judgment costs counsel's time and, since 1 July 2026, cannot carry attorney's fees unless the notice and itemisation requirements were met first. Against a home with $30,000 of equity and a married owner-occupier, the judgment achieves nothing against the house.
- Distinguish lien enforcement from judgment enforcement in your collections policy. Many Georgia association policies treat these as one escalation ladder. They are now governed by different statutes with different thresholds.
- Recognise which owners are unprotected. Non-resident and investor owners do not have the homestead exemption. Georgia communities with substantial single-family-rental ownership are in a materially different position from owner-occupied ones.
- Re-run the economics of small balances. With fees gated, the homestead exemption doubled, and fines excluded from the foreclosure calculation from January, the cost of pursuing a modest delinquency to judgment has risen while the prospect of recovery has fallen.
The one that cuts the association's way
Set against three tightenings, one provision runs in the opposite direction and is worth boards knowing about, because it changes the sensible strategy.
SB 406 Section 5 strikes “four” and inserts “six” in the final sentence of § 44-3-232(c): the assessment lien now lapses six years after the assessment first became due and payable, rather than four.2
Georgia has therefore restructured association collections from speed toward patience. Acceleration is prohibited from January. Fines cannot build a foreclosable balance. Fees cannot attach without notice and a 30-day window. Money judgments are harder to execute against a home. But the lien lasts fifty percent longer.
The rational Georgia association in 2027 is one that assesses accurately, documents carefully, applies payments in the statutory order, and waits — recovering at sale or refinance, where the lien is satisfied out of proceeds and none of these obstacles apply.
The provision that still decides most recoveries
Which makes an unamended section the most important one in a Georgia association's collections file: § 44-3-232(d). An association that fails to furnish a statement of amounts due within five business days of a qualifying request extinguishes its lien as against the purchaser or lender in that transaction.
SB 406 did not touch it. In a collections world that now depends on being paid at closing, a missed five-day deadline is the single most expensive administrative failure available to a Georgia manager.
What to watch next
The first indexation, on 1 July 2031, and the state revenue commissioner's methodology for it. More immediately, whether Georgia associations shift toward statement-of-account discipline and away from litigation. The statutory incentives now point firmly that way, and the associations that notice first will collect more than the ones that keep suing.
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