Georgia HOA Meeting Notice and Record-Keeping Duties

O.C.G.A. Section 44-3-230 sets the meeting floor for associations under the Georgia Property Owners' Association Act. Meetings of the members are held as the bylaws provide, and in any event not less frequently than annually. The notice periods are fixed by statute rather than left to the bylaws: at least 21 days in advance of any annual or regularly scheduled meeting, and at least seven days in advance of any other meeting. Every notice must state the time and place, and for a special meeting it must also state the purpose, which is what stops a board from calling a meeting on a vague agenda and then transacting something else.

Delivery is equally prescribed. Notice goes to each lot owner personally, by United States mail with postage prepaid, by statutory overnight delivery, or electronically in accordance with Chapter 12 of Title 10, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act. It must reach owners of record at whatever address they have designated to the association, and where an owner has designated none, at the address of their own lot. An association cannot satisfy this by posting a sign at the entrance or relying on a newsletter.

The annual meeting carries a reporting duty that owners can hold a board to. At that meeting, comprehensive reports of the affairs, finances, and budget projections of the association must be made to the lot owners. The statute requires all three: not only what was spent, but what the association projects for the year ahead.

Subsection (b) supplies the remedy when a board simply does not convene. If the association fails to hold an annual meeting on or before the last day of its fiscal year, the meeting may be called by holders of at least 5 percent of the association's voting power. The articles of incorporation or bylaws may set a different figure, but they may not require more than 25 percent, so a board cannot write the self-help remedy out of existence by demanding an unreachable share. The call must be signed by those holders, dated, delivered to any corporate officer of the association, and must include one or more demands describing the purpose or purposes for which the meeting is to be held. It may be transmitted in writing or by electronic transmission.

Record keeping is a separate statutory duty, in Section 44-3-231(d). In addition to anything the article or the instrument imposes, the association shall keep detailed minutes of all meetings of the members and of the board of directors, detailed and accurate financial records including itemized records of all receipts and expenditures, and any books and records required by law or necessary to reflect accurately the affairs and activities of the association. Note what that provision does and does not do. It obliges the association to create and hold those records; it does not, in this section, give a member a right of inspection, set a deadline to produce them, cap copying charges, or supply a remedy for refusal. Those mechanics run through the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code in Title 14, which Section 44-3-231(a)(4) and (f) reference as applicable law, so an owner seeking access is working from Title 14 rather than from this Act.

Both sections have been amended repeatedly and recently, by House Bill 220 effective July 1, 2024 and by Senate Bill 153 effective July 1, 2025, so an association operating from an older copy of its own procedures may be working to superseded notice rules.

One caution about scope. The Georgia Property Owners' Association Act is opt in: it reaches only associations whose declaration has been submitted to the article. Many Georgia subdivisions are governed purely by their recorded covenants under general contract law, and for those the statutory notice periods in this section do not apply at all. Check whether the declaration submits the community to Article 6 of Chapter 3 of Title 44 before relying on these deadlines.

Section 44-3-230 attaches no fine or penalty to a board that gives short notice or skips the annual meeting. The practical consequences are two. First, action taken at a meeting noticed in breach of the statute is open to challenge, and Section 44-3-223 supplies the cause of action for non-compliance with the association instrument and the Act, maintainable by the association or, in a proper case, by one or more aggrieved lot owners on their own behalf or as a class action. Second, subsection (b) gives owners a direct route around an inactive board: once the fiscal year closes without an annual meeting, holders of 5 percent of the voting power may call the meeting themselves by signed, dated demand delivered to any corporate officer.