2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation

What happened. Georgia now regulates its homeowners, condominium and property owners' associations at the state level. Governor Brian Kemp signed Senate Bill 406, the “Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act,” on 12 May 2026. The Office of Legislative Counsel records it as Act 715.¹

Until this Act, Georgia had no state administrative supervisor of community associations at all. Disputes between an owner and a board went to court or nowhere. That changes on 1 January 2027, when almost all of the Act takes effect.

What the Act actually does

Section 2 creates an entirely new chapter of the Code — O.C.G.A. Title 43, Chapter 17A, sections 43-17A-1 through 43-17A-9 — inside Title 43, the title that governs professions and businesses. That placement is itself the story: Georgia has chosen to treat operating an association as a regulated activity.

The opening command of the new chapter is short:²

“No person shall operate an owners' association in this state unless such person is registered under this chapter as an owners' association.”

Alongside the new chapter, the Act amends five existing Code sections: O.C.G.A. §§ 44-3-222, 44-3-226, 44-3-232, 44-3-235 and 44-7-50.¹ Those amendments reach how a development comes under the Property Owners' Association Act, what majority is needed to amend a declaration, when an association may foreclose, and — in a provision that has nothing to do with associations at all — when a court may seal an eviction record.

How broad is “owners' association”

Much wider than the Property Owners' Association Act alone. Section 43-17A-1(6) defines the term to reach a “neighborhood, condominium development, common interest community, as such term is defined in Code Section 44-16-2, 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.”

Article 3 is the Georgia Condominium Act; Article 6 is the Property Owners' Association Act. The words “including, but not limited to” carry the definition past both, to any residential community in a delineated geographic area where recorded covenants apply. A Georgia subdivision that never submitted to the POA Act and runs on common-law covenants is inside this chapter.

The two dates that matter

Section 9 splits the Act in two. Subsection (a) makes it effective 1 January 2027. Subsection (b) carves out one section: “Section 7 of this Act shall become effective on July 1, 2026, and shall apply to all actions filed on or after such date.”

Section 7 is the attorney's-fee provision, and it has therefore been binding law in Georgia since 1 July 2026 — more than two months before this article was published, and while most published guidance was still pointing readers at January.

1. Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 2026 Session, Office of Legislative Counsel (Act 715; SB 406) ↩
2. Senate Bill 406, as passed (26 LC 49 2879S) — signed copy, Office of the Governor ↩