Georgia owners get twelve statutory rights — including three years of bank statements
Georgia owners get twelve statutory rights — including three years of bank statements
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation
What happened. New O.C.G.A. § 43-17A-7, created by the Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act, sets out twelve rights that belong to owners in a Georgia owners' development from 1 January 2027. It is the section the Act is named for.1
Some of the twelve restate what Georgia law already provides. Two are specific enough to change what a board has to hand over.
The records right, and the three-year list
The first right is to “inspect and obtain copies of owners' association records, accounting records, and other records of the owners' association upon written demand and in compliance with the laws of this state and the governing documents.” Then the sentence that gives it teeth:
“Such accounting records shall be the finalized balance sheet, budget, profit and loss statements, and bank statements for the past three years.”
Four named documents, a three-year window, and the word finalized — which forecloses the familiar answer that the figures are draft or unaudited. Bank statements in particular are the item Georgia associations most often decline to produce.
Note the qualifier that precedes it, though: the right is exercised “in compliance with the laws of this state and the governing documents.” Whether a declaration that excludes bank records from inspection is overridden by this paragraph, or merely supplemented by it, is a genuine open question that Georgia's community-association bar has already flagged.
The insurance right
The second right is narrower than owners might hope and more useful than it looks: on written demand, “a copy of the owners' association certificate of insurance for all such insurance obtained by the owners' association for the benefit of the owner and that may apply to a potential claim or submitted claim.”
It is a certificate, not the policy. But it is tied to a potential claim as well as a submitted one, so an owner does not have to file first to find out what coverage exists.
Meetings, access, and the duty of care
Rights (3) through (10) are the governance floor:
- notice of members' meetings “in a fair and reasonable manner”;
- attendance at members' meetings, “which shall be called and held by the board of directors at least annually”;
- access to common areas, amenities and common elements, subject to the governing documents;
- ingress, egress and access to one's own property;
- statutory notice and process should the association foreclose;
- amendment of the governing documents at the thresholds Georgia law and the documents require;
- an expectation that a director performs their duties “in good faith and with the degree of care an ordinary, prudent person in a like position would exercise under similar circumstances”; and
- an expectation that directors disclose conflicting interests in a transaction to the rest of the board.
The annual-meeting requirement is the one with immediate practical bite. Georgia communities where no meeting has been called in years — and there are documented examples — are in breach of a statutory right from January.
The household-composition right
Right (11) is the most unusual on the list and has no obvious Georgia antecedent:
“Be free from governing documents that interfere with the freedom of residents to determine the composition of their household, except that owners' associations shall have the power, subject to the laws of this state and federal law, to require that all occupants of a household be members of a single housekeeping unit, and to limit the total number of occupants permitted in each individually owned property and its fair share use of the common facilities, including parking.”
The structure is a right with two express carve-outs. An association may still impose a single-housekeeping-unit requirement and an occupancy cap. What it may not do is regulate who the household consists of — the relationship between the people living there.
Covenants restricting occupancy to persons related by blood, marriage or adoption are the obvious target, and they are not rare in older Georgia declarations. The carve-outs are themselves “subject to… federal law,” which imports the Fair Housing Act's familial-status protections into the occupancy cap.
The discrimination right, and what now sits behind it
Right (12) is the right to “challenge discriminatory practices by an owners' association as authorized by the laws of this state or federal law.” On its own that adds nothing — it authorises nothing new and creates no cause of action.
What gives it substance is a decision handed down eleven months before the Act was signed. In Watts v. Joggers Run Property Owners Association, Inc., No. 22-13763 (11th Cir. 7 Apr. 2025), the Eleventh Circuit — whose decisions bind Georgia — held in a published opinion that “when a person enters into an enforceable agreement as part of purchasing a property, such as the mandatory HOA contract here, Section 3604(b) prohibits discrimination related to any additional privileges, services, and facilities afforded by that agreement.”2
Selective covenant enforcement and restricted amenity access inside an association are, after Watts, actionable under the Fair Housing Act in Georgia. Right (12) points at that.
What the list conspicuously omits
The enacted twelve are not the twelve that circulated in draft. An earlier version of the bill included satellite-dish, American-flag, political-sign and religious-display rights for association members. All four were removed before passage.
Georgia therefore still has no statutory flag-display right, no political-sign right and no religious-display right for association members, and the position on rooftop solar is unchanged — the bill that would have barred associations from prohibiting solar installations died in committee. Any summary telling Georgia owners that Act 715 gave them display rights is reading the draft.
How an owner enforces any of this
Section 43-17A-7 creates rights and supplies no remedy of its own. Two routes exist and they are different in kind.
The complaint. Section 43-17A-5 lets a person residing in the development complain to the Secretary of State within 180 days of the action or inaction, with a hearing officer appointed to investigate. This is the cheap route, and it carries an automatic stay on collecting disputed fines and fees.
The courts. For records specifically, Georgia's nonprofit corporation code already supplies an inspection remedy at O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602 and following, which most Georgia associations are subject to as nonprofit corporations. Section 43-17A-7 does not displace it.
But note what the Act does not give the Secretary of State: a power to order an association to produce records to an owner. The enforcement powers in § 43-17A-3 run to the registration — denial, suspension, revocation, limiting fines and fees, barring an individual. A hearing officer's conclusions under § 43-17A-5 are not self-executing; somebody has to bring an action to enforce them.
What to watch next
The records question. An association that has always refused bank statements under a declaration clause now faces a statute naming bank statements — while the same paragraph makes the right subject to the governing documents. That circularity is the most likely subject of the first serious dispute under Chapter 17A, and nothing in the Secretary of State's yet-unwritten rules is obliged to resolve it.
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