Three Georgias, Two Januaries: Georgia Housing in 2026 | Labros Property Holdings

THREE GEORGIAS, TWO JANUARIES

Georgia Housing in 2026

The Atlanta Core Is Tightening, the Northern Ring Is Loosening, the Coast Is Doing Something Worse — and Two Regulatory Deadlines Land Three Days Apart

A Note on Method

This is the third edition in this series. It was the first to be measured before it was written, and the measurement still was not enough.

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The Florida and Texas editions were drafted from secondary reporting and then audited. Both audits found the reports’ central theses unsupported — Texas’s most severely, where we had described a Dallas–Fort Worth “core versus ring” split we had never measured and which did not exist.

So this edition began with a data pull. Six Georgia counties, one publisher, one observation date. We tested the thesis we intended to write — that institutional single-family-rental portfolios were trimming positions in Clayton, Henry and DeKalb and adding inventory there — and it failed. Active listings were down in all three. We rewrote the section, published the failure, and thought we had learned the lesson.

Two consequences for how this report should be read. First, the thesis in this edition is the third one we have held about Georgia, and Appendix E records all three. Second, and more useful to you than any finding here: a sample chosen to answer one question does not become a general sample when that question dies. We have added that to the standing checks for this series.

Section II sets out the two regulatory deadlines and is the most heavily sourced part of this report. Sections III and IV set out the three bands. Appendix E records what we discarded and why, including two theses of our own and nine claims that did not survive audit.

A. January 1, 2027 — Georgia SB 406
B. January 4, 2027 — The Fannie Mae Reserve Requirement
C. Different Scopes, Provision by Provision
D. Georgia Has No Reserve Statute
E. What a Georgia Board Should Be Asking Counsel

A. What Twelve Counties Show
B. The Tightening Core
C. The Loosening Ring
D. The Institutional Landlord Thesis, Corrected — and the Federal Statute Behind It

A. Two Counties, Not One
B. Absorption, and What We Can and Cannot Say About It
C. Building for Hyundai — in a County We Cannot Measure
D. The Insurance Line

A. Insurance
B. Property Tax — and the Statute We Missed
C. The Rate Environment

Executive Summary

Confidence labels appear inline, in brackets, on the first use of any figure that is not VERIFIED. Appendix D defines the labels and lists this edition’s limitations.

Market data is as of the dates indicated, is drawn from a single observation date of July 1, 2026, and is subject to change. Conditions described here may have reversed by the time this is read.

Georgia in 2026 is not two markets. It is three, and they are moving in three different directions — while two regulatory deadlines land in the same week of January 2027.

The Central Finding: Three Bands, and One We Nearly Missed

We pulled county-level series for twelve Georgia counties from FRED’s Realtor.com panel, all on the July 1, 2026 observation date. Six were in our original sample; six were added after audit.

County	Band	Median DOM	DOM YoY	Active	Active YoY	New listings YoY	Price-cut ratio	Median list	List $ YoY
Cobb	northern ring	49	+6.5%	2,952	+7.5%	−5.4%	46.7%	$469,000	+1.4%
Gwinnett	northern ring	50	+8.7%	3,802	+8.4%	−0.8%	42.1%	$457,000	−0.4%
Paulding	outer ring	51	+6.2%	988	+1.9%	+0.0%	46.6%	$394,500	−0.0%
Forsyth	northern ring	51	+6.2%	1,399	+11.1%	+10.2%	51.9%	$677,450	−2.8%
Cherokee	northern ring	52	+10.6%	1,421	+6.4%	−10.2%	42.5%	$563,675	−1.1%
DeKalb	core	53	−8.6%	3,041	−18.1%	−15.4%	39.7%	$342,998	+8.9%
Henry	south metro	58	−10.8%	1,318	−2.3%	+19.7%	36.3%	$377,000	+1.4%
Douglas	outer ring	60	+15.4%	723	+5.4%	−7.7%	33.2%	$367,500	−0.2%
Fulton	core	60	+0.0%	5,921	−5.6%	−11.3%	32.8%	$399,913	+1.9%
Clayton	south metro	62	+10.7%	900	−3.4%	−4.7%	32.0%	$253,500	+1.4%
Chatham	coastal	77	+26.2%	1,777	+27.2%	−4.4%	41.1%	$399,900	−5.3%
Effingham	coastal	79	+41.1%	388	+18.7%	+5.7%	34.5%	$387,498	−0.6%

Key Findings

Two regulatory deadlines land three days apart, and their scopes differ provision by provision. January 1, 2027: Georgia SB 406, the Property Owners’ Bill of Rights Act, signed May 12, 2026. January 4, 2027: the Fannie Mae reserve requirement (Lender Letter LL-2026-03). Section II.C sets out which provisions reach condominiums, which reach HOAs, and which reach neither. We got this wrong in our own first draft and have rebuilt it from the enrolled statute.

Part of SB 406 is already in force — and only one part. Since July 1, 2026, an association must itemise any attorney fee it passes through in a collections matter, and a court may review it for reasonableness. Section 9 of the Act puts every other provision at January 1, 2027. This provision applies to actions filed on or after July 1, 2026, not to all enforcement activity.

Not registering is a choice the statute offers, not a trap it sets. An association may elect not to register, by written notice to the Secretary of State, and is then a “nonregistered owners’ association” — a defined term. The consequence is that it cannot collect fines or fees, cannot file or record liens, and cannot initiate foreclosure. The bargain is enforcement powers in exchange for registration and disclosure. Our first draft called this a penalty for an administrative omission. It is not.

The association foreclosure threshold is not $4,000. It is the lesser of $4,000 or twelve months of regular assessments, and never less than $2,000 — with fines, fees and specific assessments excluded from the calculation. For an association charging under about $333 a month, the threshold is below $4,000. For one charging under about $167, it is $2,000 — unchanged from prior law. And this provision amends the Property Owners’ Association Act only: it does not reach condominium associations.

Georgia, like Texas, has no reserve statute. Georgia law does not require an association to commission a reserve study or hold any reserve balance. The Condominium Act requires resale disclosure of a budget itemising reserves; it sets no funding percentage or amount. Georgia condominium associations therefore meet a lender’s reserve deadline with no state framework behind them.

The institutional-landlord exit is real, is federally caused, and is invisible at county level. Invitation Homes raised its 2026 disposition guidance to $750–950 million (midpoint $850 million, up $300 million from February) and holds 12,561 Atlanta homes; net dispositions across the major operators ran about 3,180 homes nationally in the first six and a half months of 2026 [reported]. The cause is H.R. 6644, which became law on July 11, 2026 and bars institutional owners of 350 or more single-family rentals from buying more. It halts acquisition without forcing liquidation — so no forced-seller mechanism exists, and none is visible in the county data. Section III.D sets this out.

Gwinnett is not an exception. Our first draft devoted a section to explaining Gwinnett as a one-off builder story. It is one of six ring counties with the same signature, and the only one our original sample contained.

Chatham is not the only county deteriorating on all four measures, and it is not unambiguously the sharpest. Four Georgia counties show time on market, inventory and price cuts all rising while list prices fall: Chatham, Effingham, Forsyth and Paulding. Effingham is sharper than Chatham on time on market (+41.1% against +26.2%) and on price cuts (+45.7% against +34.2%); Chatham is sharper on inventory and price. Effingham is in the Savannah MSA, so the coastal deterioration is regional rather than a single-county story.

The Savannah inventory build is not an inflow surge — and this now rests on twelve months, not one. Chatham’s active inventory rose 27.2% while new listings over the twelve months to July 2026 fell 5.4% (4,948 against 5,232), with the monthly stock series climbing continuously and no intra-year surge. Outflow slowed. We say outflow rather than absorption deliberately: this panel cannot distinguish a listing that went under contract from one withdrawn or expired.

Savannah insurance runs about 58% above the average of ten other Georgia cities analysed — on $250,000 of dwelling coverage. At roughly $3,355 a year against about $2,123 [reported]. That is a city-level comparison from one aggregator on a stated coverage basis, and it is not a statement about “the rest of the state.” Georgia is not an insurance-crisis state: on rate-filing data Georgia rose 7.3% in 2025 against 6.0% nationally, and 40.2% since 2020 against 46.8% nationally — 33rd of the fifty states.

Georgia’s carrying cost is materially lighter than Texas’s, and the reason is property tax. Tax and insurance on a $400,000 home run about $470 to $560 a month depending on county — about 55 to 60% of the Texas range, not half. Effective rates are Chatham 0.84%, Fulton 0.88%, Gwinnett 0.95%, against a Georgia statewide figure near 0.79% [reported] and Texas county rates of 1.41% to 2.22%.

We missed a Georgia property tax statute signed the day before the one this report is built around. SB 33, the HOME Act, signed May 11, 2026, ends the HB 581 opt-out: the inflation cap on homestead assessments becomes mandatory for every county, city and school district, applicable January 1, 2027, using 2026 values as the baseline. Our first draft told buyers in Fulton, Gwinnett and Chatham to model taxes growing with the market rather than with inflation. For 2027 onward that is wrong. For 2026 it holds, and the opt-out attribution was imprecise besides — the school systems opted out in all three; the county governments did so only in Gwinnett.

Georgia has two foreclosure mechanisms and they should not be blended. Mortgage foreclosure is non-judicial and fast — a 30-day notice of intent, four weekly publications, a first-Tuesday sale, commonly 60 to 180 days. Association lien foreclosure under SB 406 is judicial, and now carries a 60-day pre-foreclosure notice whose satisfaction extinguishes the right to foreclose. ATTOM does not publish Georgia in its mid-year five-longest or five-shortest state tables, and we state no Georgia duration. We also hold no Georgia foreclosure volume data, so we make no shadow-inventory claim.

What This Means

For buyers, the negotiating position has moved in the northern ring and on the coast, and moved against you in the core. Anyone told that “Atlanta has inventory” should ask which Atlanta.

For sellers, the core is stronger than the headlines suggest and the ring and coast are weaker.

For association boards, registration is a decision rather than a deadline, the fee-itemisation rule already applies to actions filed since July 1, and the foreclosure threshold is probably lower than you have been told — if it reaches you at all.

I. Methodology: What We Measured, and What Changed After Audit

Series We Pulled Ourselves

County-level active-inventory series from the Federal Reserve Economic Data service, which republishes a Realtor.com county panel. Median days on market, active listing count, new listing count, price-reduced count, and median listing price for twelve Georgia counties, all on the July 1, 2026 observation date: Cobb, Cherokee, Chatham, Clayton, DeKalb, Douglas, Effingham, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Paulding.

Sections III and IV rest on these. One publisher, one basis, one date.

On the Price-Cut Ratio — A Correction to Our Own Method

We report price-reduced count divided by active listings. The numerator is a monthly flow and the denominator a point-in-time stock, so the ratio is an intensity indicator, not a share of listings ever reduced. It should not be read as “four in ten listings have been cut.” Our first draft said all of that, and then asserted that the ratio was nonetheless comparable across counties on the same date. Audit tested that claim, which we had not.

Figures From Published Reporting

Our first draft listed “Georgia premium reporting” as a single source category. Audit found four publishers of materially different quality behind it. They are now separated.

Figure	Publisher	Basis
SB 406 provisions, dates, scope	Georgia SB 406 as passed (2026 Ga. Laws Act 715; LC 49 2879S), read section by section	Enrolled statutory text
Condominium financing	Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03; Selling Guide B4-2.2-02, B4-2.3-01, B4-2.1-01, B7-3-03; Freddie Mac Bulletin 2026-C	Primary publisher documents
Georgia reserve law	Georgia Condominium Act, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-111(b)(6); Property Owners’ Association Act	Statute
Property tax statute	Georgia SB 33 (HOME Act); Georgia Department of Revenue 2026 legislative update; Fulton County Board of Assessors 2026 overview	Statute and administering agency
Savannah / Effingham city insurance	MoneyGeek, updated 2026-09-01	Synthetic quote at $250,000 dwelling / $125,000 contents / $200,000 liability / $1,000 deductible. Aggregator; no named rate vendor
Georgia statewide premium range	ValuePenguin (LendingTree), updated 2026-08-11, via Quadrant Information Services	Insurer rate filings, $350,000 dwelling
Georgia vs national rate change	LendingTree, State of Home Insurance: 2026, updated 2026-06-08, via S&P Global RateWatch (NAIC filings) + Quadrant	Rate filings, $350,000 dwelling
Property tax effective rates	Tax Foundation (ACS 2024 five-year); SmartAsset	Compilations of assessor data
Chatham market corroboration	Savannah Area REALTORS / Georgia Association of REALTORS, Chatham County Local Market Update, July 2026	Association closed-sales reporting
Institutional single-family rental	Invitation Homes Form 8-K, Q2 2026 supplemental (accession 0001687229-26-000041); Parcl Labs via CNBC, 2026-07-21; John Burns Research and Consulting, July 2025	Company filing; third-party estimates
Federal SFR acquisition ban	H.R. 6644, enacted 2026-07-11	Statute
Savannah regional demand	Georgia Tech Research Corporation / Enterprise Innovation Institute for SEDA, presented February 2025	Commissioned study
Rates	Freddie Mac PMMS, week ended 2026-08-27	Primary publisher

What This Edition Does Not Measure

No months of supply by county from our own pull. Where we cite one for Chatham it is the Savannah Area REALTORS county figure, on a closed-sales basis, and it is labelled. Our first draft said no county months-of-supply figure existed and then published one; that was a contradiction, and the association’s county-level report is the resolution.
No sub-county data. We do not attribute any county figure to a neighbourhood, submarket, or price band. Our first draft breached this by attributing Gwinnett’s inventory rise to the upper-middle of the market on the strength of a county median. That inference has been removed.
No cumulative days on market, and no ability to detect delist-and-relist cycles.
No ability to separate outflow from absorption. A listing leaves the active file on contract, on expiry, or on withdrawal, and this panel does not say which. Every statement in Section IV is about outflow, not about buyer behaviour.
No aged-inventory count.
No condominium series for any Georgia county from FRED — the panel is not segmented by property type. This matters for Section II: we cannot size how much Georgia stock the January 4 requirement reaches. The Savannah Area REALTORS report does publish a Chatham condominium series, which is the one segment view we have, and Section IV.A uses it.
No association-level reserve data. We do not know what share of Georgia condominium associations hold a qualifying reserve study.
No off-MLS transaction visibility. A specific limitation for Section III.D.
No Georgia foreclosure duration and no Georgia foreclosure volume. We hold no filing counts, no delinquency series and no REO data for Georgia. We therefore make no claim about the size of any Georgia foreclosure pipeline.
No Bryan County data of any kind. The Hyundai Metaplant and Pembroke’s approved subdivisions are in Bryan County, which has no series in this panel. Section IV.C is explicit about what that costs us.
No coverage-matched cross-state insurance comparison. Our Georgia city figures are $250,000-basis synthetic quotes; the Texas figure imported from our Texas edition is a Texas Department of Insurance average of in-force policies across the real coverage mix. Those are not the same kind of number and Section V.A no longer treats them as one.
Florida and Texas comparison figures are imported from the companion editions. Where audit re-derived them on a like-for-like basis the corrected figures are used and flagged.

II. Two Januaries

A note on what follows. Section II.A describes a statute, quoted from the enrolled text. Section II.B describes a private lender guideline, which its publisher can amend, delay, or supersede without legislative process. We describe both as published as of this report’s date and cite the sources. We cannot represent that either will apply on the stated date in the stated form, and we do not undertake to update this report if they change. Nothing here is legal advice. Labros Property Holdings is not a law firm, does not practise law in Georgia or any state, and no attorney-client relationship is created by this report. Labros is not a lender, mortgage broker or loan originator, and cannot tell any reader what a specific lender will permit. SB 406 has no implementing rules published and no judicial construction; every statement about how it will operate is a prediction. Verify with Georgia counsel and with a licensed lender before making any decision that depends on either instrument.

Georgia is the only state in this series facing two association-related regulatory changes in the same week. They are frequently discussed as though they were one thing. They are not — and, as Section II.C sets out, SB 406’s own provisions do not all reach the same associations.

A. January 1, 2027 — Georgia SB 406

The Georgia Property Owners’ Bill of Rights Act was signed by Governor Kemp on May 12, 2026. It creates a new Chapter 17A of Title 43 and amends the Property Owners’ Association Act, the dispossessory statute, and related provisions.

Registration Is an Election, With a Price

Chapter 17A requires an owners’ association to register with the Secretary of State: governing documents, plus a form giving name, address and officers, and one financial statement dated no more than one year before filing. Registration expires each December 31 and is renewed annually. Records relating to assessments, fines, fees, liens and foreclosures must be kept ten years, at an office in this state, whose address is notified to the Secretary of State.

The price of that election is the enforcement toolkit. A nonregistered association — and any registered association that lets its registration lapse — cannot collect fines or fees, cannot file or record liens, and cannot initiate foreclosure proceedings.

The Foreclosure Threshold Is Not $4,000

Section 5 amends § 44-3-232. The operative language:

No foreclosure action against a lien arising out of this subsection shall be permitted unless the amount of the lien is at least the lesser of $4,000.00 or an amount equal to 12 months of regular assessments … in arrears but not less than $2,000.00; provided, however, that no specific assessment … or other fine or fee shall be included in the calculation of the amount of such lien.

Four things follow, and published commentary gets most of them wrong.

And It Reaches Only Part of the Market

Section 5 amends Code Section 44-3-232, which sits in Article 6 of Chapter 3 of Title 44 — the Property Owners’ Association Act. Condominium associations are governed by Article 3, the Georgia Condominium Act, which Section 5 does not touch.

Payments Apply in Four Tiers, and Acceleration Is Banned

Section 43-17A-8(a) ranks how an owner’s money must be applied: (1) regular assessments or dues until current, (2) special assessments until current, (3) specific assessments until current, (4) other fees and fines. Our first draft gave two tiers and dropped the middle two — which is where most contested money sits, and precisely the charges a condominium board facing a reserve requirement is likely to levy.

Section 43-17A-8(b) adds two prohibitions that apply regardless of registration status. An association may not refuse to accept a payment of any amount, and may not assess or collect accelerated assessments at all. Accelerating a year’s dues on default has been a standard collection lever in Georgia. From January it is unavailable.

An Owner Can Freeze Collection by Filing

Chapter 17A creates a complaint process before a hearing officer. An owner files a written statement of facts within 180 days of the action or inaction complained of. The hearing officer investigates and may order a hearing; after it, the parties have 15 days to satisfy the conclusions; unsatisfied, the matter can go to court, with appeal to magistrate court and then petition for review. The nonprevailing party pays the other side’s court costs.

The provision boards should read twice:

The filing of a complaint under this subsection shall act as an automatic stay prohibiting the respondent from collecting or attempting to collect from the complainant any fines or fees that are the subject of the complaint.

The Pre-Foreclosure Notice Is Sixty Days

The notice must state the assessments due, authorised late charges and the interest rate, and must state that payment before the sixtieth day following receipt “will eliminate the right of foreclosure.” Our first draft said thirty days and did not mention that satisfaction extinguishes the right.

One More Section, Outside Our First Draft Entirely

Section 8 amends § 44-7-50, the dispossessory statute, adding a court-ordered time certain to pay outstanding sums. That is landlord-tenant law, not association law, and it is worth naming in a metro carrying the largest institutional single-family-rental concentration in the country.

The One Provision Already In Force

Our first draft described this as an itemisation-and-reasonableness rule and said it “applies to enforcement activity happening now.” It is a notice-and-cure gate, and it is keyed to filing date. Both matter to a board deciding whether to file this month.

B. January 4, 2027 — The Fannie Mae Reserve Requirement

Three days later, a lender guideline takes effect that this series documented in its Texas edition.

Three points of precision, because published commentary routinely gets them wrong:

But Two Parts Are Already In Force

Our first draft put the whole of LL-2026-03 in the future. It does not all sit there. As of August 3, 2026:

Also live since earlier in 2026: the project review waiver expanded to projects of ten units or fewer, and master-policy provisions including a $50,000 per-unit deductible cap.

C. Different Scopes, Provision by Provision

Our first draft answered this with a binary grid: does SB 406 reach HOAs, condominiums, PUDs — yes or no. The grid was wrong in two cells and imprecise in four, and the reason is structural. A yes-or-no table cannot describe an instrument whose provisions have different scopes. Here is the provision-level version.

Provision	Source	Effective	Reaches condominium associations	Reaches POA Act associations	Reaches non-POA-Act covenant HOAs
Registration, records, 10-yr retention	SB 406 § 2, new O.C.G.A. Ch. 43-17A	Jan 1, 2027	Yes	Yes	Yes
Payment waterfall, no partial-payment refusal, no accelerated assessments	SB 406 § 2, § 43-17A-8	Jan 1, 2027	Yes	Yes	Yes
Complaint process and automatic stay	SB 406 § 2	Jan 1, 2027	Yes	Yes	Yes
Owner inspection rights (3 yrs of records)	SB 406 § 2, § 43-17A-7	Jan 1, 2027	Yes	Yes	Yes
Attorney-fee notice, itemisation, reasonableness review	SB 406 § 7	July 1, 2026, actions filed on/after	Yes	Yes	Yes
Foreclosure threshold (lesser of $4,000 / 12 mo, floor $2,000)	SB 406 § 5, amending O.C.G.A. § 44-3-232 (Article 6)	Jan 1, 2027	No	Yes	No
60-day pre-foreclosure notice	SB 406 § 5	Jan 1, 2027	No	Yes	No
Automatic POA Act applicability for new associations	SB 406 § 6, amending § 44-3-235	Jan 1, 2027	n/a	Yes	brings some in
15% reserve allocation	Fannie LL-2026-03 / Freddie 2026-C	Jan 4, 2027 (application date)	Yes	No	No
Baseline funding ban; reserve study alternative	LL-2026-03	Aug 3, 2026	Yes	No	No
Limited Review retired (Full Review mandatory >10 units)	LL-2026-03	Aug 3, 2026	Yes	No	No
Master-policy insurance provisions	LL-2026-03 / B7-3-03	2026, in force	Yes	Yes, PUDs included	Yes, PUDs included

Chapter 17A’s definition of “owners’ association” is what makes the top half broad. Section 43-17A-1(6) reaches “a neighborhood, condominium development, common interest community … or group of homeowners or property owners, including … associations formed pursuant to Articles 3 and 6 of Chapter 3 of Title 44″ — Article 3 being the Condominium Act and Article 6 the POA Act. Registration reaches condominiums. The foreclosure amendment does not.

Two practical readings:

That distinction is not a technicality. A board that levies an assessment to reach a 15% reserve allocation it is not subject to has spent its members’ money for nothing. Before levying anything to meet the Fannie Mae standard, confirm with counsel whether your association is legally a condominium association for GSE purposes — detached-condominium and small-project treatment turns on the form of ownership recorded in your declaration, not on how the community describes itself. Detached condominium units and 2-to-4-unit condominium projects sit outside the reserve test, and the project review waiver now reaches projects of ten units or fewer.

D. Georgia Has No Reserve Statute

The Georgia Condominium Act requires that certain resale disclosures include an operating budget itemising reserves — including reserves for deferred maintenance and depreciation — at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-111(b)(6)(A). It sets no funding percentage and no dollar amount. Where reserve obligations exist in Georgia they come from an association’s own declaration or bylaws, or from lender guidelines. Not from statute. SB 406 adds none: we checked the enrolled text section by section.

SB 406 does touch reserves once, indirectly. Section 43-17A-1(8) defines “regular assessments” to include reserve fund contributions — which matters, because the foreclosure threshold is calculated on regular assessments.

This is the same position Texas is in, and it produces the same consequence: Georgia condominium associations meet a lender’s reserve deadline in January with no state framework to have prepared them. Florida associations met their August 2026 requirement after four years under a statutory reserve and inspection regime. Georgia associations have had no equivalent.

E. What a Georgia Board Should Be Asking Counsel

These are questions, not instructions. Nothing in this section is legal advice, Labros is not a law firm, and SB 406 has no implementing rules or case law. Every item here should go to a Georgia attorney.

Are we going to register, or elect not to? It is a choice with a defined price — no fines, no fees, no liens, no foreclosure. (January 1. If registering: governing documents, name, address, officers, and one financial statement dated within the previous year.)
Are we itemising attorney fees, and sending the notice with a cure period, in collections matters? (Already required for actions filed on or after July 1, 2026.)
Which of our charges are regular, special and specific assessments? The payment waterfall, the foreclosure threshold and the fines exclusion all turn on that classification. (January 1.)
Are we accelerating assessments on default? That has to stop. (January 1.)
Are we a POA Act association? The new foreclosure threshold and the 60-day notice reach POA Act associations only. Submission is elective and many Georgia HOAs never submitted. (January 1.)
If we are a condominium: do we have a reserve study completed within the last three years, and what percentage of budgeted assessment income currently goes to reserves? (January 4 — and note the baseline-funding ban and the Full Review requirement are already live.)
Where are our records kept, and for how long? Ten years, at an office in this state, address on file with the Secretary of State. (January 1.)

An owner or buyer can already obtain an association’s budget and reserve position through the Condominium Act’s resale-disclosure channel. Use that rather than an informal request.

III. Metro Atlanta: A Core–Ring Split

A. What Twelve Counties Show

County	Band	Median DOM	DOM YoY	Active YoY	New listings YoY	Price-reduced YoY	Median list	List $ YoY
Cobb	northern ring	49	+6.5%	+7.5%	−5.4%	+1.0%	$469,000	+1.4%
Gwinnett	northern ring	50	+8.7%	+8.4%	−0.8%	−6.8%	$457,000	−0.4%
Paulding	outer ring	51	+6.2%	+1.9%	+0.0%	+2.7%	$394,500	−0.0%
Forsyth	northern ring	51	+6.2%	+11.1%	+10.2%	+10.3%	$677,450	−2.8%
Cherokee	northern ring	52	+10.6%	+6.4%	−10.2%	−0.7%	$563,675	−1.1%
DeKalb	core	53	−8.6%	−18.1%	−15.4%	−43.9%	$342,998	+8.9%
Henry	south metro	58	−10.8%	−2.3%	+19.7%	−17.6%	$377,000	+1.4%
Douglas	outer ring	60	+15.4%	+5.4%	−7.7%	−17.2%	$367,500	−0.2%
Fulton	core	60	+0.0%	−5.6%	−11.3%	−23.6%	$399,913	+1.9%
Clayton	south metro	62	+10.7%	−3.4%	−4.7%	−16.8%	$253,500	+1.4%

Our first draft measured five of these ten and concluded that metro Atlanta was tightening. It reported that active listings were falling in “four of the five metro counties,” which was true of that sample and is not true of the metro. The pattern is a split, and it runs along the obvious geographic line.

Two cautions on what this does and does not establish. These are active-inventory measures at a single date: they describe the standing stock and how fast it is clearing, not transaction volume. And ten counties is not the twenty-nine in the metropolitan statistical area — Rockdale, Newton, Fayette, Coweta, Bartow, Hall and others are still unmeasured. “Metro Atlanta” in this report means the ten counties named above. We have been burned once by treating a sample as a market and will not do it twice.

B. The Tightening Core

DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton and Henry all show falling active inventory, and DeKalb’s fall is the largest movement in the Georgia panel in either direction: active listings −18.1%, price-reduced count −43.9%, median list price +8.9%, time on market down 8.6% to 53 days. Fulton is the same shape at a quarter the amplitude. Clayton and Henry show falling inventory and falling price cuts, with time on market moving in opposite directions.

That distinction matters, and our first draft did not draw it. A market can absorb inventory, or it can simply be fed less. In the Atlanta core both stock and inflow are contracting together, which is the signature of fewer people listing rather than more people buying. We cannot separate the two with this panel, and we are not going to assert the flattering reading. What we can say is that standing inventory in the core is materially tighter than a year ago, and that sellers who do list are cutting prices far less often than they were.

C. The Loosening Ring

Six counties — Cobb, Gwinnett, Paulding, Forsyth, Cherokee and Douglas — show rising active inventory and rising time on market. Every one of them.

They are also the fastest markets in the state in absolute terms: Cobb at 49 days, Gwinnett 50, Paulding and Forsyth 51, Cherokee 52. This is not distress. It is a fast market getting slower from a very fast base. Douglas is the outlier within the band at 60 days and +15.4%.

The profile is consistent with new-construction delivery. These counties permitted heavily from 2022 to 2024, and those homes complete and enter the market on a multi-year lag. A county absorbing builder deliveries shows exactly this signature: more standing inventory, longer marketing times, flat-to-soft pricing. List prices across the band run from −2.8% (Forsyth) to +1.4% (Cobb) — essentially flat, in a metro whose core is up 1.9% to 8.9%.

Within the band, Forsyth is the one to watch: active inventory +11.1%, and unlike its neighbours its inflow is rising too, +10.2%, with price cuts up 10.3%. Forsyth also carries the highest median list price in the state at $677,450. Rising stock against rising inflow, with cutting increasing, is a genuine supply story rather than a slowdown in turnover.

We also removed a second Gwinnett claim. Our first draft said its highest-in-metro median list price made its softness “a story about the upper-middle of the Atlanta market rather than about entry-level supply.” We have no price-band data at all, as our own methodology section says twice. A county median tells you nothing about which tier the inventory sits in, and a 2022–24 permitting wave more naturally implies entry-level product. The inference has been withdrawn.

D. The Institutional Landlord Thesis, Corrected — and the Federal Statute Behind It

This report was going to be built on a different argument, and the data killed it. Then audit found that we had also left out the reason the argument existed at all.

What We Expected to Find

The narrative — widely reported, and the one we intended to develop — is that institutional single-family-rental operators are trimming their Atlanta portfolios and pushing inventory onto the market, concentrated in the south metro and DeKalb.

The corporate evidence for the disposition is real and specific:

Invitation Homes raised its full-year 2026 guidance for wholly owned dispositions to $750–950 million, midpoint $850 million — an increase of $300 million over the $550 million midpoint it gave in February, with wholly owned acquisition guidance unchanged at a $250 million midpoint. The company attributed the increase to “continued favorable private market valuations relative to public market pricing.” (Form 8-K, Q2 2026 supplemental, filed July 29, 2026.)
The same filing puts Invitation Homes’ own Atlanta portfolio at 12,561 wholly owned homes as of June 30, 2026, about 12.7% of its wholly owned revenue.
Across the major operators — Progress Residential, Invitation Homes, AMH, Tricon, FirstKey, Amherst and VineBrook — dispositions outpaced acquisitions by roughly 3,180 homes nationally between January 1 and about July 21, 2026 [reported — third-party estimate by Parcl Labs, via CNBC]. Those seven hold roughly 400,000 homes between them.
Progress Residential is estimated to own about 12,163 single-family rentals in the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Alpharetta area [single-source — Parcl Labs estimate; Progress is privately held and files no portfolio disclosure].
Institutional investors are estimated to hold 27.9% of metro Atlanta’s single-family rental stock [single-source — John Burns Research and Consulting, July 2025, counting owners of 100 or more properties]. A more recent count puts roughly 72,000 institutionally owned single-family rentals in metro Atlanta, about 4% of the region’s single-family homes [reported — AELP, May 2026], with Atlanta leading the nation at more than double Phoenix.

The Federal Statute We Left Out

Our first draft never mentioned it, and called the 2026 selling “a genuine strategic shift by the largest owners of single-family rental housing in the country.” That is an unsupported causal claim. These firms stopped buying because buying became unlawful. Every source reporting the 3,180 figure frames it against this statute.

Naming it fixes three things at once.

What the County Data Shows

County	Active listings, YoY	Price-reduced count, YoY	Median list price, YoY
DeKalb	−18.1%	−43.9%	+8.9%
Clayton	−3.4%	−16.8%	+1.4%
Henry	−2.3%	−17.6%	+1.4%

If institutional owners were adding meaningful listing volume to these markets, active inventory would rise. It has fallen — steeply in DeKalb.

The Reconciliation, and What Would Have Disproved It

Both things are true, and reconciling them requires being honest about what could have come out differently.

That second point cuts against our own finding, and audit pressed a harder version of it: if dispositions can be invisible, what observation would have proved us wrong? It is a fair challenge and it exposes something we had presented as a result. Taken together, “too small to see” and “happening off-MLS” can absorb any county reading whatsoever. As a reconciliation it is unfalsifiable, and we are demoting it from finding to interpretation.

One Note on Paulding

Our expanded sample brought in the county with the highest reported institutional concentration in the metro: Paulding, at about 78% of single-family rentals and roughly 11% of all single-family homes [reported — AELP, May 2026]. Paulding is one of the four Georgia counties deteriorating on all four of our measures.

IV. The Coast: Chatham and Effingham

Our first draft called this section “Savannah: The Exception” and described one county. There are two, they are both in the Savannah metropolitan statistical area, and on two of four measures the one we left out is worse.

A. Two Counties, Not One

Measure	Chatham	Effingham
Median days on market	77 (+26.2%, from 61)	79 (+41.1%)
Active listings	1,777 (+27.2%)	388 (+18.7%)
New listings	434 (−4.4%)	(+5.7%)
Price-reduced count	730 (+34.2%)	(+45.7%)
Price-reduced ÷ active	41.1%	34.5%
Median list price	$399,900 (−5.3%)	$387,498 (−0.6%)

Chatham also carries the largest positive residual in the price-cut ratio. At 77 days its turnover speed predicts a ratio near 28%; it prints 41.1%. Sellers there are cutting materially more than the county’s pace alone would explain. That is the one thing the ratio is good for, and it points the same way as everything else.

The Segment View We Said We Did Not Have

Our methodology section notes that FRED publishes no condominium series for any Georgia county, and that this is the gap which prevents us sizing the January 4 exposure. Savannah Area REALTORS publishes a Chatham County report that does segment by property type, on a closed-sales basis, for the same month as our pull:

Chatham County, July 2026	Single-family	Condo / townhouse
Months of supply	4.4 → 5.6	5.6 → 9.4
Days on market	62 → 80	52 → 110
Median sale price	$370,095, flat year over year	—

We are not going to overstate it. It is one county, one publisher, closed-sales basis, and it says nothing about why — condominium markets can slow for insurance, for assessments, for financing, or for demand. But our first draft declared this the report’s central gap and then cited a marketing blog’s March figures for the county instead. The association’s July report was available and segmented.

B. Absorption, and What We Can and Cannot Say About It

The obvious explanation for a 27% inventory rise is a flood of new listings. That is not what happened in Chatham.

Our first draft rested this on a single July-versus-July comparison, and audit was right to object: a stock’s twelve-month change cannot be explained by one month of flow, and two observations cannot exclude a spring surge that had reverted by July. So we pulled the monthly history. Chatham’s active count climbs continuously — 1,397 in July 2025 through 1,435, 1,457, 1,583, 1,672, 1,760, 1,767 to 1,777 — with no intra-year spike and no reversion. The twelve-month inflow fell. The build is not an inflow surge, and now that rests on twelve months rather than one.

A listing leaves the active file three ways: it goes under contract, it expires, or the seller withdraws it. This panel does not distinguish them. Fewer withdrawals would produce exactly this pattern with no change in buyer behaviour at all. The defensible claim is about outflow:

Chatham’s standing inventory rose 27.2% while twelve-month inflow fell 5.4%. Listings are leaving the active file more slowly than they were. We cannot say whether that is because fewer are selling or because fewer are being withdrawn.

The association’s closed-sales figures are consistent with the demand reading — single-family days on market 62 to 80, condominium 52 to 110 — and that is the nearest thing to corroboration we have. It is a different publisher and a different basis, so it corroborates the direction and not the magnitude.

One further caution we owe the reader: the base year is untested. July 2025’s 1,397 sits in a series we have no long history for, and Hurricane Helene made landfall in September 2024. We invoke Helene later as a driver of Georgia insurance costs; we should therefore admit it as a candidate distortion in a coastal county’s 2025 baseline.

C. Building for Hyundai — in a County We Cannot Measure

The regional context makes the slowdown more striking, and it also exposes the largest measurement gap in this report.

The Hyundai Metaplant began production in October 2024 and is projected to employ up to 8,500 people directly, with substantially larger indirect employment through suppliers and logistics. A Georgia Tech Research Corporation assessment for the Savannah Economic Development Authority, conducted by the Enterprise Innovation Institute and presented in February 2025, projected a need for roughly 41,000 new housing units across Bulloch, Bryan, Chatham and Effingham counties plus the City of Savannah within five years, with Chatham’s own share a deficit of 9,300 to 10,000 units at 60 to 120% of area median income [reported]. Pembroke has approved 2,891 homes not yet built, across four planned unit developments on about 550 acres annexed after Hyundai’s 2022 announcement [single-source].

What we can say: the two Savannah-MSA counties we can measure are the two slowest markets in Georgia, and the county where most of the Hyundai-driven construction is approved is invisible to us. The Georgia Tech figure is a five-year regional projection from February 2025, now eighteen months old, and more recent reporting suggests the regional shortage has narrowed since.

D. The Insurance Line

There is a cost-side drag on coastal Georgia demand, and it needs stating more carefully than our first draft managed.

Three corrections to how we put this the first time.

V. Economic Drivers

A. Insurance

Georgia is not an insurance-crisis state, and our first draft came closer to implying otherwise than the data supports.

On the best-documented basis available — LendingTree’s State of Home Insurance: 2026, built from S&P Global RateWatch NAIC rate filings and Quadrant Information Services data at $350,000 of dwelling coverage:

	Georgia	National
2025 increase	+7.3%	+6.0%
2020–2025 cumulative	+40.2%	+46.8%

One forward-looking note that cuts against the calm reading: at least one carrier-facing analysis projects a further 10% Georgia increase in 2026, and ranks Georgia third nationally on 2024 combined ratio — the argument being that Georgia rates sit low relative to modelled risk. If that is right, Georgia’s below-national five-year figure is a lag rather than a structural advantage.

B. Property Tax — and the Statute We Missed

This is where Georgia’s real structural advantage over Texas sits, and where our first draft made its most consequential error.

	Effective rate on market value
Chatham	0.84%
Fulton	0.88%
Gwinnett	0.95%
Georgia statewide	~0.79%
Texas, DFW counties	1.41% – 2.22%

Georgia assesses at a 40% ratio and grants a basic homestead exemption of $2,000 — taken off assessed value, not market value, which most secondary sources get wrong. But $2,000 is a statutory floor: many counties grant $10,000 to $25,000 or more, and Gwinnett’s Value Offset Exemption is materially better. Our first draft called the exemption “dwarfed by Texas’s $140,000,” which overstates the gap for a real Georgia homesteader in most counties.

SB 33 — Signed the Day Before SB 406

Two further corrections to the same passage:

Carrying Cost, Built From County-Consistent Pairs

Tax plus insurance on a $400,000 home, each county paired with its own insurance environment:

County	Property tax	Insurance (at $250k dwelling basis)	Monthly stack
Fulton (0.88%, inland)	$293	$177	$470
Gwinnett (0.95%, inland)	$317	$177	$494
Chatham (0.84%, Savannah)	$280	$280	$560

Against the Texas range of $770 to $1,040, Georgia runs about 55 to 60% — not “roughly half,” which we said five times. And the comparison needs one more caveat: Texas’s insurance figure is a Texas Department of Insurance average of in-force policies across the real coverage mix; Georgia’s is a synthetic $250,000-basis quote from an aggregator that does not name its rate vendor. Those are not the same kind of number.

C. The Rate Environment

Rates are approximately flat year over year and slightly higher. Nothing in this report’s inventory movements can be attributed to a change in the rate environment, because there has not been a material one. That is worth stating plainly: the divergence between Atlanta’s core and its ring, and between both and the coast, happened under an essentially constant rate.

Every payment figure in Section VII uses 6.66% on a 30-year term.

VI. Foreclosure: Two Mechanisms, Not One

If you are behind on a Georgia mortgage, act now rather than later. Free HUD-approved housing counselling is available at 800-569-4287 or hud.gov/counseling. The State Bar of Georgia Lawyer Referral Service is 800-334-6865. Consider consulting an attorney before conveying your home to anyone. Labros Property Holdings is not a foreclosure-rescue, loan-modification, short-sale negotiation, or credit-counselling service, and does not operate in Georgia.

Our first draft treated Georgia foreclosure as one thing. It is two, they run on different tracks, and SB 406 changes only the second.

A. Mortgage Foreclosure Is Non-Judicial and Fast

A Georgia security deed is enforced without a lawsuit:

Step	Requirement
Lender may commence	after the borrower is 120 days delinquent — a federal requirement, 12 C.F.R. § 1024.41(f)(1), not Georgia law
Notice of intent	no later than 30 days before the proposed sale, by registered or certified mail or statutory overnight delivery — O.C.G.A. § 44-14-162.2
Advertisement	four weekly publications — O.C.G.A. § 9-13-141
Sale	first Tuesday of the month, at the courthouse — O.C.G.A. § 9-13-161(a)
Typical, first missed payment to sale	roughly 60 to 180 days [reported]

B. Association Lien Foreclosure Is Judicial

SB 406’s threshold changes sit in a different mechanism entirely. Section 5 amends § 44-3-232, whose text refers to “any such court order for judicial foreclosure.” An association forecloses its assessment lien through the courts, not by advertisement and courthouse sale.

From January 1, 2027, for Property Owners’ Association Act associations only:

The lien must be at least the lesser of $4,000 or twelve months of regular assessments, and never less than $2,000, excluding fines, fees and specific assessments
The pre-foreclosure notice must state the amounts due and that payment before the sixtieth day following receipt eliminates the right of foreclosure

C. What We Do Not Know, and Will Not Claim

VII. Archetype Autopsies

Two assumptions apply throughout and both understate cost. Insurance figures are on a $250,000 dwelling-coverage basis [assumption — see Section IV.D] and are therefore floors for homes priced above that. Flood insurance is not included in any figure, and for the coastal archetype that is a material omission we cannot size.

Autopsy 1 — Coastal Single-Family, Chatham County


Representative list price	$399,900 (county median)
20% down	$319,920 financed
Principal & interest at 6.66%, 30 yr	$2,056
Property tax at 0.84%	$280
Insurance (assumption: Savannah ~$3,355/yr at $250k basis)	$280
Flood insurance	not included — unpriced
Total monthly outlay	$2,616

Chatham County is the largest and slowest deteriorating market in Georgia: time on market 77 days and up 26.2%, inventory up 27.2%, price cuts up 34.2%, median list price down 5.3%. Those are county statistics, not properties of this composite. What the composite illustrates is a structure: on this coast the carrying cost is close to an inland home’s and the liquidity is not.

Autopsy 2 — Northern Ring Single-Family, Gwinnett County


Representative list price	$457,000 (county median — highest of the ten metro counties)
20% down	$365,600 financed
Principal & interest at 6.66%, 30 yr	$2,349
Property tax at 0.95%	$362
Insurance (assumption: inland ~$2,123/yr at $250k basis)	$177
HOA dues (assumption)	$75
Total monthly outlay	$2,963

Autopsy 3 — Metro Atlanta Condominium, Facing the January 4 Requirement


Representative unit price	$250,000
20% down	$200,000 financed
Principal & interest at 6.66%, 30 yr	$1,285
Property tax at 0.88%	$183
Insurance — HO-6 (assumption)	$55
Monthly dues	$325
Total monthly outlay	$1,848

VIII. Comparative Data Synthesis

The Three Bands

	Core + south metro	Northern + outer ring	Coastal
Counties measured	DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton, Henry	Cobb, Gwinnett, Paulding, Forsyth, Cherokee, Douglas	Chatham, Effingham
Median DOM range	53 – 62	49 – 60	77 – 79
Active listings	falling in all four	rising in all six	rising in both
Time on market	mixed	rising in all six	rising sharply in both
Median list price	rising in all four	flat to −2.8%	−5.3%, −0.6%
Price-reduced count	falling in all four	mixed	rising sharply in both
Four-measure adverse	none	Forsyth, Paulding	Chatham, Effingham
Reading	tighter stock, thinner inflow	builder delivery into a fast market	slowest markets in the state

Georgia Against Texas and South Florida

	Georgia	Texas	South Florida
Counties measured	12	6	3
Median DOM range	49 – 79 (30 days)	47 – 69 (22 days)	see FL edition
Intra-metro DOM spread	Atlanta, 10 counties: 13 days	DFW, 4 counties: 6 days	—
Geographic structure	core / ring / coast — three bands	between metros, not within DFW	segment-driven, not geographic
Property tax, effective	0.84 – 0.95% (statewide ~0.79%)	1.41 – 2.22%	—
Tax + insurance on $400k	~$470 – $560/mo	~$770 – $1,040/mo	—
Reserve statute	none	none	four years of statutory regime
Association oversight statute	SB 406, from Jan 1 2027	Tex. Prop. Code ch. 209; SB 1588 management certificates	Florida condominium statutes
Mortgage foreclosure	non-judicial, ~60–180 days [reported]	non-judicial, 155 days (ATTOM, shortest in nation)	judicial, long
Foreclosure duration published	not in ATTOM’s top/bottom five	155 days	see FL edition
Homestead protection	inflation cap mandatory from 2027 (SB 33)	$140,000 exemption	—

Where Georgia Sits in This Series

Chatham remains the largest and slowest of them and carries the largest positive price-cut residual. It is no longer the only one, it is not the sharpest on every measure, and it is not alone in its own metropolitan area.

A note on this edition. Two sections of the full report — IX. The Buyer’s Playbook and X. The Seller’s Reality Check — are not reproduced here. They set out practical steps for buyers, sellers and association boards, and they turn on a Georgia statute that has no implementing rules and no judicial construction yet. We would rather have them read by a Georgia attorney before publishing them than have someone act on them. Section numbering below is unchanged so that references from the appendices still resolve.

XI. Forecast Through 2027

Forward-looking statements. Everything in this section is an expectation about the future, not a measurement. It rests on conditions described elsewhere in this report continuing, and those conditions can change without notice. No price, return, yield, appreciation rate, or investment outcome is projected or promised. We do not undertake to update this report.

Metro Atlanta

The Coast

The Two Januaries

Two things push toward the harder outcome and both emerged in audit rather than drafting. Georgia has no reserve statute, so nothing has been preparing associations. And Limited Review was retired on August 3, 2026, making Full Review mandatory above ten units — which means more transactions get tested at all. That cuts against the benign reading, and it belongs in the forecast rather than in a footnote.

XII. Conclusion

Georgia in 2026 is three markets, and the third one nearly did not make it into this report.

This is the third thesis we have held about Georgia. The first died in measurement, before a word was drafted. The second died in audit, when someone asked why we had chosen those six counties. Appendix E records all three, because a report that only shows you the version that survived is not showing you its method.

Appendix A: Works Cited

Series we pulled ourselves

Statutes and primary legal sources

Georgia SB 406, “Georgia Property Owners’ Bill of Rights Act,” as passed (LC 49 2879S), signed 2026-05-12. Read section by section. Creating O.C.G.A. Title 43, Chapter 17A; amending §§ 44-3-222, 44-3-226, 44-3-232, 44-3-235, 44-7-50. Effective dates at Section 9.
Georgia SB 33, “Homeownership Opportunity and Market Equalization Act of 2026,” signed 2026-05-11. Georgia Municipal Association summary; Georgia Department of Revenue, Local Government Services, 2026 legislative update; Fulton County Board of Assessors, “2026 Legislative Changes to Property Taxes — SB 566, SB 33,” 2026-05-27.
O.C.G.A. § 44-3-111(b)(6)(A) — condominium resale disclosure, budget itemising reserves.
O.C.G.A. § 44-14-162.2 (30-day notice of intent); § 9-13-141 (four weekly publications); § 9-13-161(a) (first-Tuesday sale).
12 C.F.R. § 1024.41(f)(1) — federal 120-day delinquency rule (Regulation X).
H.R. 6644, enacted 2026-07-11 — institutional single-family rental acquisition prohibition.
Georgia Condominium Act; Georgia Property Owners’ Association Act.

Lender guidelines

Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, “Updates to Project Standards and Property Insurance Requirements,” issued 2026-03-18.
Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-2.2-02 (full review; reserve calculation on budgeted assessment income); B4-2.3-01 (PUD eligibility — imposes no reserve requirement); B4-2.1-01 (project review waiver, projects of ten units or fewer); B7-3-03 (master property insurance, version 08/05/2026, covering PUD projects and the $50,000 per-unit deductible cap).
Freddie Mac Bulletin 2026-C, issued 2026-03-18 — parallel reserve requirement, same effective date.

Insurance — four publishers, separated

MoneyGeek, Georgia homeowners insurance, updated 2026-09-01. Savannah ~$3,355/yr; ten-other-city average ~$2,123; Georgia statewide $2,258. Basis: $250,000 dwelling / $125,000 contents / $200,000 liability / $1,000 deductible. Synthetic quotes; no named rate vendor. Tier table: $1,243 at $100k, $2,258 at $250k, $4,092 at $500k.
ValuePenguin (LendingTree), Georgia, updated 2026-08-11, via Quadrant Information Services insurer rate filings. Statewide ~$2,640 at $350,000 dwelling coverage.
LendingTree, State of Home Insurance: 2026, updated 2026-06-08, via S&P Global RateWatch (NAIC rate filings) and Quadrant, $350,000 basis. Georgia +7.3% in 2025 against +6.0% nationally; +40.2% 2020–2025 against +46.8% nationally; Georgia 33rd of fifty.
insurancequotes.com — statewide ~$1,700 at $300,000 dwelling coverage. No published methodology; cited only as the low end of our stated range.
Hurricane Helene loss context: Atlanta Journal-Constitution; The Current; Grist. Helene’s Georgia losses were largely inland, including ~$5.5bn in agriculture and forestry.
No publisher produces Georgia homeowners premiums by county. Our first draft’s Chatham-and-Glynn county ranking is withdrawn; see Appendix E.

Property tax

Tax Foundation, Georgia state profile and “Georgia Property Tax Reform” (2025-04-17) — effective rates; HB 581 opt-out attribution by jurisdiction type.
SmartAsset, Georgia property tax calculator — county effective rates.
Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners, HB 581 and the Value Offset Exemption.

Market and economic reporting

Savannah Area REALTORS / Georgia Association of REALTORS, Chatham County Local Market Update, July 2026 — single-family and condominium/townhouse months of supply, days on market, median sale price.
Invitation Homes, Form 8-K, Q2 2026 supplemental (accession 0001687229-26-000041, filed 2026-07-29) — FY2026 disposition guidance $750–950M (midpoint $850M, raised from $550M); acquisitions $150–350M wholly owned, $50–150M JV; 12,561 wholly owned Atlanta homes at 2026-06-30.
Parcl Labs, via CNBC, 2026-07-21 — ~3,180 net dispositions across seven operators, national, 2026-01-01 to ~2026-07-21; Progress Residential ~12,163 Atlanta-area rentals (estimate; Progress is private).
John Burns Research and Consulting, July 2025 — 27.9% of metro Atlanta single-family rental stock held by owners of 100+ properties.
Georgia Public Policy Foundation (Denson & Perdue, 2025-11-06) — methodology spread: 27.9% of SFR stock, 4.2% of overall housing stock (AEI), ~0.6% for the three largest operators.
AELP, “The New Rent Seekers,” 2026-05-01, via AJC — ~72,000 metro Atlanta institutional SFRs, ~4% of the region’s single-family homes; Paulding ~78% of SFR and ~11% of all single-family homes.
Invitation Homes / ResiBuilt acquisition, $89 million including up to $7.5 million earn-out, announced 2026-01-16 — company release.
Georgia Tech Research Corporation / Enterprise Innovation Institute, Center for Economic Development Research, for the Savannah Economic Development Authority; commissioned September 2024, presented February 2025 — ~41,000 units needed across Bulloch, Bryan, Chatham and Effingham counties and the City of Savannah within five years; Chatham deficit 9,300–10,000 units at 60–120% AMI.
Hyundai Metaplant — production began 2024-10-03; up to 8,500 direct jobs; $7.6bn campus. Located in Bryan County.
Pembroke, Bryan County — 2,891 approved homes across four PUDs on ~550 acres (Bryan County News) [single-source].
ATTOM, Mid-Year 2026 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report — national average 563 days in Q2 2026; five longest and five shortest state timelines only. Georgia in neither.
Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week ended 2026-08-27 — 30-year fixed 6.66%; 15-year 5.98%.

Companion editions

Sources withdrawn from this edition

georgiasb406.com, thegoodhoa.com, managecasa.com — unattributed or low-authority summaries. Both of our critical SB 406 errors trace to this tier. noradarealestate.com — a real-estate marketing blog whose city-of-Savannah March 2026 figures our first draft used in place of the county association’s July report. Insurance agency marketing pages and search-optimised content sites, which supplied the withdrawn Chatham-and-Glynn county ranking.

Appendix B: Glossary of Key Terms

Appendix C: Georgia, Texas and South Florida Compared

	Georgia	Texas	South Florida
Counties measured	12	6	3
Observation date	2026-07-01	2026-07-01	2026-07-01
Median DOM range	49 – 79	47 – 69	see FL edition
Full spread	30 days	22 days	—
Intra-metro spread	Atlanta, 10 counties: 13 days	DFW, 4 counties: 6 days	—
Geographic structure	three bands: core, ring, coast	between metros, not within DFW	segment-driven
Four-measure adverse counties	4 (Chatham, Effingham, Forsyth, Paulding)	0	0 at county level; yes at condo segment level
Property tax, effective	0.84 – 0.95% (state ~0.79%)	1.41 – 2.22%	—
Assessment ratio	40%	100%	—
Homestead relief	inflation cap mandatory from 2027 (SB 33)	$140,000 exemption	—
Tax + insurance, $400k home	~$470 – $560/mo	~$770 – $1,040/mo	—
Insurance basis	synthetic, $250k dwelling, aggregator	TDI average of in-force policies	Citizens + private
Reserve statute	none	none	four years of statutory regime
Association oversight statute	SB 406, from 2027-01-01	Tex. Prop. Code ch. 209; SB 1588 (2021) management certificates filed with the county clerk	Florida condominium statutes
Mortgage foreclosure	non-judicial, ~60–180 days [reported]	non-judicial, 155 days (shortest in nation)	judicial, long
ATTOM duration published	no	yes	yes

Appendix D: Data Confidence Framework

Label	Meaning	Applied to
VERIFIED	Traced to a primary publisher or official document that we read	All twelve counties’ FRED series and derived ratios; Chatham monthly history; all SB 406 provisions — read from the enrolled text section by section; SB 406 effective dates; Fannie Mae reserve threshold, denominator, application-date trigger, B4-2.2-02, B4-2.3-01, B4-2.1-01, B7-3-03; Freddie Bulletin 2026-C; O.C.G.A. §§ 44-3-111, 44-14-162.2, 9-13-141, 9-13-161(a); 12 C.F.R. § 1024.41(f)(1); H.R. 6644 enactment date; Invitation Homes disposition guidance and Atlanta portfolio count (Form 8-K); Freddie Mac PMMS; ATTOM national and state timelines; Bryan County’s absence from the panel
REPORTED	Attributed to a named publisher we did not independently reproduce	SB 33’s first applicable tax year (Georgia DOR legislative update); Georgia and national insurance rate changes (LendingTree / S&P RateWatch); Georgia statewide premium range (ValuePenguin / Quadrant; insurancequotes.com); county and statewide effective tax rates (Tax Foundation, SmartAsset); HB 581 opt-out attribution by jurisdiction (Tax Foundation); Chatham months of supply, days on market and median sale price, single-family and condominium (Savannah Area REALTORS); 3,180 net dispositions (Parcl Labs via CNBC); ~72,000 metro Atlanta institutional SFRs and ~4% share (AELP); Georgia foreclosure timeline of 60–180 days; Hyundai employment and production date; Georgia Tech 41,000-unit projection
SINGLE-SOURCE	One origin, no corroboration found	Savannah ~$3,355/yr and the ~58% city differential (MoneyGeek only); Progress Residential ~12,163 Atlanta rentals (Parcl Labs estimate; Progress files nothing); 27.9% institutional share of Atlanta SFR stock (John Burns); Paulding ~78% of SFR (AELP); Pembroke 2,891 approved homes (Bryan County News); the projected further 10% Georgia insurance increase in 2026
DERIVED	Computed by us from labelled inputs	All price-cut ratios; all YoY percentages; the r = −0.90 and r = −0.53 correlations; Chatham’s twelve-month inflow change; the ~$2,123 ten-city insurance average and the $1,232 differential (back-solved from MoneyGeek’s stated 58%, so derived from a single-source input); all carrying-cost stacks and the $470–$560 band; the 55–60% Georgia-to-Texas ratio; the 12.9% tax offset; every payment figure in Section VII; the 5.9%–17.6% reserve gross-up range
ASSUMPTION	Modelled input, not measured	The $250,000 dwelling-coverage basis carried into $400,000-home comparisons; inland Georgia insurance of ~$2,123 applied outside the ten cities analysed; HOA dues and HO-6 premiums in Section VII; the 80-unit condominium’s dues and reserve starting point
WITHDRAWN	Published in our first draft; removed	See Appendix E

Known limitations

Ten of metro Atlanta’s twenty-nine counties measured. Rockdale, Newton, Fayette, Coweta, Bartow, Hall and others are unmeasured. Expanding from five to ten reversed this report’s central finding; we do not extrapolate to the rest.
Bryan County is not in the panel, so the Hyundai construction is unmeasurable here.
No condominium series from our own pull. The single Chatham segment view is a different publisher on a closed-sales basis. This remains the top research priority: we cannot size the January 4 exposure without it.
No association reserve survey exists for Georgia. Section XI’s central uncertainty is unresolvable until one does.
Outflow cannot be separated from absorption in this panel.
Effective tax rates for three counties only — Chatham, Fulton, Gwinnett.
No coverage-matched cross-state insurance comparison.
No Georgia foreclosure volume data, so no shadow-inventory claim.
SB 406 has no implementing rules and no case law. Every statement about its operation is a prediction about application, even where the text is verified.
Deed-level institutional grantor analysis for Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton and Henry would settle Section III.D and has not been done by us or, so far as we can find, by anyone.
Georgia counsel has not reviewed this report.