A buyer under contract on a one-bedroom at The Manhattan this fall will get the same document a Dunwoody condo buyer has gotten for years: an HOA resale disclosure packet listing dues, reserves, and a line about what happens if an owner falls behind on assessments. That line has said $2,000 for as long as anyone closing this year has been house hunting. By January 1, 2027, that number will be wrong.
The change comes from Senate Bill 406, the Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act, which Governor Brian Kemp signed on May 12, 2026 after it passed the Senate 51-0 and the House 155-10. It is the broadest rewrite of Georgia community association law in more than a decade, and it lands with a split timeline: one provision already took effect on July 1, 2026, and the rest arrives January 1, 2027. Anyone buying or selling a condo in Dunwoody's high-rises and gated communities this fall is closing in the gap between those two dates, on documents that describe a legal framework with an expiration date already printed on it.
What the packet says today
Georgia's resale disclosure rules require condominium sellers to hand buyers an estimated or actual association budget that itemizes reserves for things like roof replacement and deferred maintenance. That much has not changed. What is changing sits underneath it, in the boilerplate about collections and enforcement that most buyers skim past on their way to the HOA fee line.
Dunwoody's condo stock gives this some texture. The Manhattan is a 27-story tower with 222 units north of I-285, a short walk from the Sandy Springs MARTA station. The Sterling of Dunwoody is a 192-unit gated community built in 2007. Terraces of Dunwoody and Dunwoody Club Townhomes round out the mid-density options closer to Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Georgetown Shopping Center. Each of these associations operates under a declaration that, under current Georgia law, allows foreclosure once an owner owes $2,000 in unpaid assessments. Under current law, fines and fees can count toward that number. Under current law, a board can apply an owner's partial payment to fines and attorney costs before it touches the overdue dues themselves.
None of that is unusual. It has been standard practice under the Georgia Property Owners' Association Act for years, and it is the language sitting in most condo declarations in the metro area right now, including in Dunwoody's buildings.
The law nobody's packet mentions yet
SB 406 rewrites all three of those mechanics.
The foreclosure threshold moves from $2,000 to $4,000, or twelve months of unpaid regular assessments, whichever comes first. More importantly, fines and fees no longer count toward that number. Only unpaid regular and special assessments do. A board that has been counting a stack of late fees toward a foreclosure filing will not be able to do that once the law takes effect.
Payment priority flips. Under the new law, when an owner sends in a payment, the association has to apply it to regular assessments first, then special assessments, then specific assessments tied to owner-caused damage, and only after all of that to fines and fees. Many existing governing documents specify the opposite order, applying fines first, which means those documents will need amending to stay enforceable.
Every homeowners association and condominium association in the state also has to register annually with the Georgia Secretary of State starting under this law. An association that fails to register cannot collect fines, cannot record a lien, and cannot foreclose. Registration renews every December 31, which means the first renewal cycle under the new rule lands at the exact moment a lot of Dunwoody closings scheduled for late 2026 are working their way through title.
One piece of this is not waiting for January. Section 7 of the act, covering attorney's fees and judicial review, took effect July 1, 2026. Any Dunwoody condo association governed by the POAA now has to send a separate written notice by certified mail before it can pursue attorney's fees on a delinquent account, and any fees it eventually collects are subject to judicial review for reasonableness. That provision is already live. A closing happening this week is already operating under it, whether the resale packet says so or not.
Why the transition window matters more than the law itself
The individual provisions read like housekeeping. What they add up to is a live period, roughly from now through the end of the year, when the document a buyer is handed and the law that will govern that building are not the same thing.
That gap matters most for two groups. A seller whose association has not started planning for annual registration is handing buyers a declaration with unenforceable thresholds baked in, which becomes a conversation the buyer's attorney will eventually have to have anyway. A buyer closing in November or December is inheriting a board that may be scrambling to update collections language, election procedures, and records policy all at once in the final weeks before the deadline, which is exactly the kind of scramble that produces inconsistent enforcement in year one.
Board elections are part of that scramble too. Registered associations now have to hold annual elections with formal procedures for contesting results, which some Dunwoody communities' bylaws do not currently spell out in enough detail to comply. Records retention jumps to a mandatory ten years, with owners gaining an explicit statutory right to inspect financial records on request, something worth knowing if you are trying to get a real read on an association's financial health before you write an offer.
What to actually ask for right now
If you are under contract on a Dunwoody condo, or thinking about listing one, the disclosure packet is no longer the whole picture. It is worth asking the association, directly or through your closing attorney, for a few specific things:
Whether the board has begun the Secretary of State registration process and when it expects to complete it. Whether the governing documents' foreclosure threshold and payment priority language have been updated to reflect the new $4,000 or twelve-month standard, or whether that update is still pending. Whether the association has sent the new certified-mail notice required before assessing attorney's fees, since that requirement has been in force since July 1. Whether board elections are being run under a documented procedure that would hold up under the new annual-election requirement.
None of this should sink a deal. Most associations will register and most declarations will get amended without drama. But a buyer who asks these questions in October is buying with better information than one who reads the packet at face value and assumes the numbers printed on it are current.
FAQ
Does this apply to single-family HOAs in Dunwoody, or only condo buildings? Both. SB 406 covers property owners' associations governed by recorded covenants as well as condominium associations under Title 44. A swim-tennis neighborhood HOA and a high-rise condo association face the same registration and enforcement changes.
What happens if a Dunwoody association simply doesn't register? It keeps existing as an association, but it loses the ability to collect fines or fees, record or enforce liens, and pursue foreclosure. For a buyer, that is worth knowing before closing, since it affects how seriously to take any outstanding violation notices tied to the unit.
Is this retroactive to closings that already happened this year? No. The bulk of SB 406 takes effect January 1, 2027. The one exception already in force is Section 7, covering attorney's fees and judicial review, which applies to actions filed on or after July 1, 2026.
Should I delay a purchase or sale until after January 1? Not necessarily. The law does not stop transactions from happening in the interim. It just means the paperwork you review today may not reflect the rules that apply by the time you might resell.
A resale disclosure packet is supposed to be the most reliable document in a condo transaction. Right now, in Dunwoody, it is one of the few documents in the deal with a countdown clock on it. Working through what that means for a specific building, a specific closing date, or a specific listing you're weighing is the kind of detail work Neil Hediger Real Estate handles as a matter of course. If you're buying or selling a Dunwoody condo before the end of the year, let's look at the paperwork together before you sign anything.
