Ask a condo association in Sandy Springs for its reserve study and you'll get one of three answers. Sometimes it's a bound report with photos of the roof and a funding schedule going out twenty years. Sometimes it's a spreadsheet a board member built themselves after a scare with the elevator. And sometimes the honest answer is that no such document has ever existed, because nothing in Georgia law has ever required one.
That last answer isn't a red flag specific to any one building. It's the default. Georgia's condominium statute, the Georgia Condominium Act at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-70 and following, governs every condo created after October 1975, but it stops well short of telling associations how much to save or how often to check. Compare that to Florida, where FPAT reports that the Surfside collapse pushed lawmakers to require a Structural Integrity Reserve Study for any building three stories or taller, with boards barred from voting to waive structural funding after December 31, 2024. Georgia never wrote that rule. A Sandy Springs board can go decades without a professional ever walking the property to estimate what the facade, the pool deck, or the parking structure will cost to replace.
That gap has mostly been academic, because Sandy Springs hasn't had much new condo product to compare against. That's changing. PrivCap Companies, a Boca Raton firm that already owns the office building next door, has city approval to build Aurelia, a 98-unit condo tower at 6190 Powers Ferry Road, just inside the Perimeter near the Chattahoochee's Cochran Shoals trail and Ray's on the River. Presales were targeted to open this past spring, with groundbreaking still slated for the first quarter of 2027. According to Urbanize Atlanta, PrivCap's CEO, Donny Cohen, described the project as intended to "bring a quality condo development unmatched in the Sandy Springs market."
That framing is about amenities and design. The more useful comparison, for anyone shopping condos here right now, is what a brand-new reserve account looks like sitting next to a thirty-year-old one that was never required to prove itself.
What Georgia Actually Requires, and What It Doesn't
The disclosure piece of Georgia's condo law is real. When a unit resells, the seller has to hand the buyer an estimated or actual association budget, and that budget has to itemize reserves, including line items for deferred maintenance and depreciation. What the law doesn't do is tell the board how that number gets calculated, whether it's based on an actual inspection, or whether it's realistic at all. A board can budget a token reserve line, disclose it accurately, and still be sitting on a building that needs a new roof it can't pay for.
| Georgia | Florida | |
|---|---|---|
| Reserve study required | No statutory mandate | Yes, for buildings 3+ stories (SIRS) |
| Minimum reserve funding | None set by statute | Full funding required, no structural waiver after 12/31/2024 |
| Resale disclosure | Budget must itemize reserves | Buyer entitled to SIRS and milestone inspection reports |
Georgia's newer Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act, SB 406, passed both chambers this year and takes effect January 1, 2027. It adds HOA registration, tightens foreclosure notice standards, and creates a state complaint process. None of that touches reserve funding directly. The state is regulating how associations treat homeowners in disputes, not how much money those associations are required to set aside before the next big repair.
For a buyer, that means the only real check on an existing Sandy Springs condo's reserve health is whatever the specific declaration and bylaws require, plus whatever the current board happens to be doing voluntarily. Some boards fund conservatively because they take the fiduciary duty seriously. Others don't, and there's no state agency that will have flagged it before you're the one holding the unit.
What a Building With No History Looks Like
Aurelia doesn't have this problem, at least not yet, because it doesn't have any history. A new condo's initial reserve budget is built into the developer's offering statement before a single unit closes. There's no deferred maintenance to hide, because nothing has had time to defer. The roof is the roof. The elevator has a warranty. Whatever percentage of assessments PrivCap earmarks for reserves at the outset is a number a buyer can actually evaluate on its own terms, since the building's whole financial history is exactly as long as the sales process.
That's a meaningfully different kind of transparency than what's available at Park Towers, where a recently listed penthouse at $408,000 comes with whatever reserve position that association has built over the building's life, disclosed through a budget line item rather than an independent study. It's different from One River Place, where condo flats sit inside a larger gated community that also includes townhomes and detached homes, each potentially under different funding assumptions depending on when the section was built. Sandy Springs hasn't had a comparable new-construction condo tower to set that baseline against in years. The closest recent equivalent, Ashton Woods' Aria community, delivered townhomes and lofts between 2017 and 2024, including a two-bedroom townhome or loft that sold for $507,500 in April 2026 and a one-bedroom unit that sold for $395,000 in March 2026, but that's attached ownership without the shared-tower reserve math that comes with a true condo building.
Aurelia won't make those older buildings worth less. A well-run association with healthy reserves and a fifteen-year-old roof is still a sound purchase regardless of what gets built down the road. What the new tower does is give buyers, for the first time in a while, an actual point of comparison for what "we don't know yet, but we can calculate it" looks like next to "we'll never really know unless someone asks."
What the Price Softening Is Actually Telling You
Sandy Springs condo prices have been giving buyers room to be selective. Over the three months ending April 2026, median condo sold price fell 9.91% year over year to $250,000, with the year-to-date figure down 13.11%. That's happening even as days on market improved, dropping to a 46-day median from 87 a year earlier, a 47% swing that points to more units moving, just at softer prices. Compare that to Sandy Springs' single-family segment over the same window, where median sold price rose 28.17% year over year to $1,125,000. The city isn't cooling evenly. Attached product is where the negotiating room lives right now.
Softer pricing on older condo stock is good news for a buyer with cash to negotiate, but it raises the stakes on due diligence rather than lowering them. A lower price does not tell you whether the association's reserve account is thin. The paperwork you're entitled to under Georgia law is the budget disclosure. The paperwork that actually tells you whether that budget is realistic, an independent reserve study, isn't guaranteed to exist at all.
What to Actually Request Before You Write an Offer
For any Sandy Springs condo built before Aurelia sets a new baseline, ask for these before your due diligence period runs out:
- The current reserve fund balance, in dollars, not just as a percentage of the annual budget
- Whether the association has ever commissioned an independent reserve study, even though Georgia doesn't require one, and if so, how recently
- The age and expected remaining life of major shared components: roof, elevators, parking structure, pool, facade
- Minutes from the past two years of board meetings, specifically any discussion of deferred maintenance or upcoming capital needs
- A history of special assessments passed in the last five years, and what triggered each one
None of this is unusual to ask for. It's unusual for buyers to ask for it with any urgency in a state where the law doesn't make it mandatory. Lenders selling loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already scrutinize a building's reserve contributions before deciding whether its units qualify for standard financing, regardless of what Georgia statute requires on paper. The market is already pricing this risk even if the state hasn't caught up to naming it.
FAQ
Does Georgia require condo associations to complete a reserve study? No. Georgia has no statutory mandate for reserve studies or minimum reserve funding levels for condominium associations. The Georgia Condominium Act requires that resale budgets itemize reserves, but it doesn't require an independent study to back up that number.
Will Aurelia's arrival lower resale values at existing Sandy Springs condo buildings? There's no reason to expect that. A new tower serves a different transaction than an established building with a known track record. What it does is give buyers a fresh comparison point for evaluating reserve health, since Aurelia's initial budget will be fully disclosed and untested by time, unlike buildings that have been collecting assessments for decades under whatever funding approach each board chose.
What's the single most useful document to request in a Georgia condo purchase? The reserve fund balance paired with an honest answer about whether an independent study has ever been performed. The budget disclosure Georgia requires tells you what the association says it's setting aside. Only a study, if one exists, tells you whether that number reflects what the building will actually need.
If you're weighing a unit in Sandy Springs against what's coming at Aurelia, or trying to make sense of what a specific association's paperwork is actually telling you, that's exactly the kind of question worth working through before you write an offer. Brennan Ballard can help you read the documents that matter and ask for the ones that don't yet exist.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
