"Buying a Brand-New Condo in Georgia: How Long Do I Have to Read the Condominium Documents?"

The sales center for a new mid-rise off Peachtree has a model kitchen, a wall of tile samples, and a floor plan with your unit number on it in dry-erase marker. You sign the contract there, on a home that has no interior walls yet. The condominium declaration, the bylaws and the first-year operating budget reach you eleven days later, bound into one package behind an index sheet. In Georgia, that delivery is the day your review period starts.

On the first sale of a brand-new Georgia condominium unit, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-111 makes your purchase contract voidable until at least seven days after the seller furnishes the required condominium documents. The seven days run from the day those documents reach you rather than from the day you signed. The contract has to carry that right in boldface type or capital letters, and the right cannot be waived.

I'm Jeff Moran, a mortgage broker in Bluffton, South Carolina, originating since 1996, NMLS #483943, through C2 Financial Corporation, licensed in fifteen states, including Georgia. On a new condominium purchase, most of the useful work happens inside those seven days, because the association's budget is also the page the lender's underwriter will read.

With a condominium, you are buying the unit and you are also joining an association that has its own budget, its own rules and its own contracts. On the first sale of a new unit, Georgia law gives you time to read those documents before the contract becomes final.

Georgia condo sales the seven-day review covers

Section 44-3-111 applies to the first bona fide sale of each residential condominium unit for residential occupancy by the buyer, a member of the buyer's family, or an employee of the buyer. That is the unit's first real sale out of the developer's hands, to somebody who will live there. New construction fits, and so does a conversion where an apartment building becomes a condominium.

A later owner selling you that same unit is not the first sale, so the window does not attach to your contract. A purchase made purely to rent the unit out falls outside the residential-occupancy language, which is a question for your closing attorney. Georgia is an attorney-closing state, and how a Georgia closing works, and the two state taxes it carries covers that side of it.

Every document the seller has to furnish, and what each one tells you

The statute lists the items, and each answers something you would want to know before you own part of a building.

• The floor plan of your unit, for the specific unit named in your contract.
• The condominium declaration and every amendment to it. What you own, what the association owns, and which rules run with the property.
• The articles of incorporation and the bylaws, with their amendments. How the association is organized, how the board gets elected, and how assessments get set.
• Any ground lease or other underlying lease. If the building is on leased land, that lease reaches you as an owner.
• Every management, maintenance or other contract running longer than one year. Commitments the association already made, which you inherit rather than vote on.
• The estimated or actual operating budget. The year's plan for the money, covering administration, management fees, maintenance, rent for recreational facilities, taxes on association property, insurance, security, other expenses and operating capital.

The statute also tells the seller how to hand it over. The items are bound or stapled into one package, behind an index sheet listing each required item and showing either that it is attached or that it does not exist. That sheet tells you whether something is missing on purpose or by accident.

Please ask for the complete condominium document package when the sales agent gives you the contract, all items and all pages, including the index sheet. We will need the declaration, the bylaws, every amendment and the operating budget.

The day your seven days start, and how that date gets proven

Delivery of all of the required items starts the window, and a partial package does not start it. An incomplete delivery leaves the contract voidable. Section 44-3-111 also sets a deadline for bringing a claim, allows attorney's fees, and carries a penalty for a willful violation. Those are remedies for a Georgia attorney to handle.

Section 44-3-111 provides that a dated written acknowledgment of receipt of all of those items, signed by the buyer, is prima-facie evidence of the delivery date. Prima-facie evidence is taken as proof unless somebody produces something better. The short form you sign when the package lands fixes your start date, so you will want to sign it, date it and keep a copy the same day.

The words "at least seven days" set a floor. Your contract may give you a longer review period, and plenty do. It cannot give you less, because the statute says that subsection may not be waived.

Your contract also has to carry the right in boldface type or capital letters. The statute's legend reads:

"THIS CONTRACT IS VOIDABLE BY BUYER UNTIL AT LEAST SEVEN DAYS AFTER ALL OF THE ITEMS REQUIRED UNDER CODE SECTION 44-3-111 OF THE 'GEORGIA CONDOMINIUM ACT' TO BE DELIVERED TO BUYER HAVE BEEN RECEIVED BY BUYER."

Voidable puts the choice on your side of the table. The contract is live and enforceable, and you are the one who may end it during the window. If you read the documents and still want the home, you let the seven days pass and keep going. If you do use the right, what happens to your earnest money is governed by the contract, so that belongs with your closing attorney. How a financing contingency and your earnest money line up covers contingency deadlines generally.

An amended document does not hand you a new seven days

In McKnight v. Golden Isles Marina, Inc., 186 Ga. App. 228 (1988), the Georgia Court of Appeals described § 44-3-111(c)(1) as an absolute right to void the contract within a cooling-off period of at least seven days after receipt of the specified materials. The buyer there contracted in March 1984 for a unit that was not built yet, received the materials, and did not act inside the window. The court held that the statute does not entitle a buyer to an additional seven-day period after later amendments.

So a revised declaration or an amended budget arriving in month four does not restart your clock, and your questions are best asked while the window is open.

Reading the association budget with your financing in view

The association's budget sets the dues, and the dues are part of the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on.

Special assessments, meaning one-time charges the association bills every owner on top of the regular dues, count too. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide B3-6-03, Monthly Housing Expense for the Subject Property (revised 12/16/2020) counts principal and interest, insurance premiums, real estate taxes, ground rent, special assessments and any owners' association dues in that figure. The guide also requires the lender to enter association dues on the application as their own line. So the dues in that budget land in your debt-to-income ratio, which compares your monthly debt payments, including the new housing payment, with your monthly income. A ground lease the seller had to disclose shows up there as ground rent.

The declaration's leasing restrictions and the budget's reserve contribution, meaning the money the association sets aside each month for future repairs, both feed the review a lender runs on the building itself. Why a condominium project has to qualify for financing too walks through what the lender asks the association. Getting the budget into my hands during your seven days keeps a problem with the dues or the reserves from surfacing late. Getting pre-approved for a Georgia mortgage with the actual dues from the budget means the pre-approval already includes the payment you will have.

Buying a resale condo in Georgia: the review period comes from the contract

On a resale condo in Georgia, your review period for the association's documents comes from your purchase and sale agreement. Georgia has no general cancel-for-any-reason cooling-off period on an ordinary residential resale, and the statutory seven days belong only to the first sale of a unit. Georgia REALTORS, a private trade association, publishes the F201 Purchase and Sale Agreement along with separate condominium-resale exhibits, and the contract you sign controls. A review period in one of those exhibits is a contract right, so it can be negotiated, shortened or left out.

A developer time-share sale has its own separate cancellation rule under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-174 (official Georgia Code portal), and that rule does not apply to a condominium purchase.

Using the seven days with your loan in view

This is the sequence I would run with you, inside a week.

1. Please ask for the complete condominium document package when the contract is presented. If it is ready at signing, your seven days start that day.
2. You will want to sign and date the acknowledgment of receipt the day the package arrives, and keep a copy. That dated acknowledgment proves the start date.
3. Please send me the complete operating budget and the declaration with every amendment the same day. The dues, the reserve contribution, any ground rent and any leasing restriction go straight into the file.
4. The index sheet is worth reading before anything else, because it tells you what exists and what does not.
5. The declaration holds the rules you will live under, and the budget shows what is coming. A thin reserve line next to an aging building is written notice that a special assessment may be on its way.
6. You make the decision before the window closes. If the answer is yes, nothing has to happen and the file keeps moving toward closing.

Buying new construction and whether to use the builder's lender covers the other long-timeline questions on a brand-new home. Association dues are generally paid to the association directly rather than collected with your mortgage payment.

An example, with invented numbers

Numbers and dates below are made up to show the mechanism, and they describe no real building. Two clients each sign on a unit in the same new Georgia condominium on Monday, March 2.

The first client treats the package as paperwork. It arrives Friday, March 13, the signed and dated acknowledgment goes back that day, and the package then stays in a downloads folder. The budget shows a first-year assessment of $410 a month plus a $90 monthly reserve contribution, and nobody opens it. The seven days pass on March 20. In late May the lender's project review turns up those figures, and the full $500 goes into the qualifying payment. The pre-approval had been issued without the budget, so the monthly payment the lender now qualifies on is $500 higher than the one in that letter. The debt-to-income ratio goes up with it, and the statutory window closed two months earlier.

The second client sends me the budget on March 13. The $500 goes into the qualifying payment that afternoon, we rerun the pricing with the dues included, and the client reads the leasing section with a week still on the clock. The numbers work, so nothing happens on March 20. If they had not worked, the client had March 14 through March 20 to ask the association questions, adjust the loan, or end the contract under the statute.

Where to start

The budget in your package has a dues figure in it, and you can put that figure into the rate tool with no credit pull, no account, and nobody calling you. You see pricing for your own scenario with the association dues in the payment, and you choose the option that works best for you. If you would rather talk it through, call me and we can read the budget together.

Once the offer is ready, what a documented pre-approval actually involves covers how your income, debts and credit get reviewed. After you close, the Georgia homestead exemption is a separate application you file yourself, and a condominium unit qualifies for it.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial, a commitment to lend, or legal advice. Contract rights, cancellation windows and condominium documents are Georgia legal matters, a Georgia attorney controls your closing, and how any of it applies to your contract is a question for that attorney. No letter from anyone is a loan commitment, and final approval depends on the property, the appraisal and full underwriting.

Common questions

How many days do I have to review condo documents in Georgia?

At least seven, on the first sale of a residential condominium unit. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-111 makes a covered contract voidable by the buyer until at least seven days after the seller furnishes every item the Code section requires. Those items are the unit's floor plan, the declaration and its amendments, the articles of incorporation and bylaws, any ground lease, every management contract running longer than a year, and the operating budget. The seven days run from delivery of all of them, and your contract may give you longer but not less.

Does the seven-day review period apply to a resale condo in Georgia?

No. The statutory window belongs to the first bona fide sale of each residential condominium unit for residential occupancy. Buying from the current owner means your review period for the association's documents comes from your purchase and sale agreement instead. Georgia REALTORS publishes the F201 Purchase and Sale Agreement and separate condominium-resale exhibits as private forms, and the contract you sign controls. Georgia has no general cancel-for-any-reason cooling-off period on an ordinary resale, so there the review period gets negotiated while the offer is being written.

Can a Georgia builder ask me to waive the seven days?

The statute says that subsection may not be waived, so the right survives language that tries to give it up. Your contract is also required to carry the right in boldface type or capital letters. The legend says the contract is voidable until at least seven days after all items required under Code Section 44-3-111 of the Georgia Condominium Act have been received. If that legend is missing, raising it with your closing attorney before you sign is reasonable.

Do the seven days give me extra time for my mortgage approval?

Not by themselves. The window covers the condominium documents and your contract, and it runs on its own calendar alongside your loan. It does give you the association's operating budget early, and that budget changes the payment you qualify on. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide B3-6-03 includes owners' association dues, special assessments and ground rent in the monthly housing expense used for your debt-to-income ratio. Getting the budget into the file during those seven days puts the dues in the numbers from the start.