He did — with a different bill

Brass kept the promise, but not by moving SB 361. In mid-January 2026 he filed a new bill, SB 406, which went to Senate Judiciary rather than Rules, was favourably reported on 26 February and passed the Senate on 4 March.³

Refiling rather than reviving was the right call procedurally — a bill parked in Rules with no hearing record is worth less than a fresh bill in a substantive committee — and it explains a fact that otherwise looks odd: Georgia's HOA statute moved from introduction to passage in seven weeks, after two years of apparent inaction.

What survived the redraft, and what did not

Three of SB 361's ideas did not make it, and each absence shapes how Act 715 works.

Secretary of State authorisation before foreclosing. SB 361 would have required an association to obtain written state authorisation before foreclosing a lien — a prior-approval model. Act 715 uses a threshold instead: an association may foreclose if the arrears clear the statutory bar, with no state involvement in the individual case. The state's role is registration and complaint, not permission.

A bar on applying assessments to foreclosure costs. This became something different and arguably stronger. Section 43-17A-8(a) now dictates that owner payments go to regular assessments first and “other fees and fines” last, and § 44-3-232(c) excludes fines and specific assessments from the foreclosure threshold entirely.

HOA dues through mortgage escrow. Escrowing association dues alongside taxes and insurance would prevent a great many Georgia delinquencies from ever arising, and it is one of the few structural fixes that helps owners and associations simultaneously. It required the Department of Banking and Finance to regulate the escrow. It is entirely absent from Act 715, and nothing has replaced it.

What survived, and one thing that got sharper

The threshold arrived, but not as SB 361 wrote it. Where SB 361 proposed a flat $4,000, the enacted § 44-3-232(c) provides for the lesser of $4,000 or twelve months of regular assessments, with a $2,000 floor — a formula that leaves many low-dues Georgia associations exactly where they were.

The registration arrived close to as proposed, with the addition of a $100 fee, a 31 December expiry and the ten-year records duty.

And the administrative hearing procedures arrived — but the deadline did not. SB 361 would have required the Secretary of State to develop them by 1 January 2026. Section 43-17A-9 of the enacted law simply directs the Secretary of State to adopt rules, with no date attached. As of early September 2026, none had been proposed.

The lesson in the timeline

For anyone tracking Georgia HOA legislation into 2027, SB 361's history is the most useful precedent available, and it cuts against pessimism.

A bill can spend a year in a committee with no hearing and still become the architecture of a statute that passes 155-10. What changed between March 2025 and March 2026 was not the policy — the policy was already written. It was the accumulation of a hearing record, sustained investigative reporting, and homeowners appearing at the Capitol in numbers.

What to watch next

Which committee any 2027 Georgia HOA bill is referred to. SB 361 went to Rules and died; SB 406 went to Judiciary and passed in seven weeks. In a chamber losing several senior Judiciary members to statewide races, that referral decision is the earliest reliable signal of whether a bill is meant to move.