Free Georgia Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Georgia residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to O.C.G.A. Title 44, Chapter 7 as amended by the Safe at Home Act — the two-month deposit cap, the move-in damage list Georgia requires before the deposit is tendered, and the 30-day return backed by treble damages.

Georgia O.C.G.A. 44-7-1 2-Month Cap Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Georgia residential lease agreement is the written contract governed by O.C.G.A. Title 44, Chapter 7, beginning at 44-7-1. Georgia never adopted the uniform residential landlord and tenant act, so its chapter is short, old in places, and unusually specific in others — and in 2024 it changed more than it had in decades. The Safe at Home Act, House Bill 404, took effect on July 1, 2024 and applies to leases entered into or renewed on or after that date. It capped the security deposit at two months’ rent in a brand-new section, 44-7-30.1; it deemed every residential agreement to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation under 44-7-13; it added cooling to the utilities a landlord may not cut off during an eviction under 44-7-14.1; and it built a three-business-day notice to vacate or pay into 44-7-50. Two older rules still catch out more Georgia landlords than any of that: the written list of existing damage that 44-7-33 requires before a deposit may be tendered, and the ten-or-fewer-unit exemption in 44-7-36, which switches off four Code sections for small owners but not the two that matter most.

Complete the fields below to generate a Georgia residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, including the utility allocations, the deposit-holding method and each disclosure you check, and the generated lease cites the controlling Georgia section at each point. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — the lease governs the relationship, screening decides whether you want it. Pair the signed lease with a Georgia move-in / move-out checklist, which is the document O.C.G.A. 44-7-33 actually demands rather than merely recommends.

Georgia recognizes the usual range of residential arrangements, but it classifies them differently from most states. A fixed-term lease runs for a stated period and expires on its own terms. A tenancy at will is what Georgia calls the open-ended arrangement most people describe as month-to-month, and under O.C.G.A. 44-7-6 the law construes any tenancy with no specified termination time as exactly that. A tenancy at sufferance arises where a tenant stays on after the right to possession has ended. There are also room and roommate agreements, subleases, and lease-to-own arrangements that add a purchase option.

The classification matters more in Georgia than elsewhere because of O.C.G.A. 44-7-1. The relationship of landlord and tenant is created where the owner grants another person the right simply to possess and enjoy the real estate; no estate passes out of the landlord, and the tenant holds only a usufruct, which may not be conveyed except with the landlord’s consent and is not subject to levy and sale. Subsection (b) makes the point general: all renting or leasing of real estate for a period of less than five years conveys only the right to possess and enjoy, passing no estate, unless the contract says the contrary. That is why a Georgia residential tenant cannot simply assign the lease, and why a sublet clause in a Georgia lease is confirming the statutory position rather than creating a restriction.

Two categories fall outside this form. A commercial lease is not covered by the residential provisions of Chapter 7, including the security deposit article, and the Safe at Home Act’s habitability provision applies only to property used as a dwelling place. And under O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(a), a contract creating the landlord and tenant relationship for a term not exceeding one year may be by parol — an oral Georgia lease of a year or less is valid. A written lease is still strongly preferred, and in Georgia it matters more than in most states, because the statutory floor is thin and several important terms exist only if the lease creates them.

Four things, effective July 1, 2024, and only for leases entered into or renewed on or after that date. House Bill 404 of the 2023 to 2024 session, published as 2024 Georgia Laws 392, is short enough to read in five minutes, and its own final operative section limits its reach to agreements entered into or renewed on or after that date. A lease signed in 2023 and never renewed does not carry the new provisions at all.

Section 2 rewrote O.C.G.A. 44-7-13. Subsection (a) keeps the old duty: the landlord shall keep the premises in repair and is liable for substantial improvements placed on the premises by the landlord’s consent. New subsection (b) adds that any contract, lease, license or similar agreement, oral or written, for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place is deemed to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation. Georgia had gone without an express statutory habitability standard; it now has one, read into every residential agreement whether or not anyone types it.

Section 3 rewrote the definition in O.C.G.A. 44-7-14.1(a) so that “utilities” means cooling, heat, light and water service. The previous definition covered heat, light and water. That single added word matters in a state with Georgia’s summers, because subsection (b) makes it unlawful for a landlord knowingly and willfully to suspend the furnishing of utilities to a tenant until after the final disposition of a dispossessory proceeding.

Section 4 created O.C.G.A. 44-7-30.1 in one sentence: no landlord shall demand or receive a security deposit in an amount that exceeds the equivalent of two months’ rent. Georgia had no cap before. Worth knowing, because it recurs in coverage: the bill as introduced set the cap at three months and would have let a tenant waive the habitability provision on a lease longer than five years. Neither survived into the enacted Act.

Section 5 rewrote O.C.G.A. 44-7-50, adding the three-business-day notice discussed below and the delivery rule in subsection (d). Also worth recording for accuracy: the introduced bill contained an expedited criminal-activity eviction scheme amending 44-7-53 and 44-7-55. That was dropped before passage, so summaries describing Georgia as having enacted expedited criminal-activity evictions in 2024 are describing a bill, not a law. And a scheduling note that trips up a surprising amount of published commentary: the Act is the Safe at Home Act of 2024, not of 2025.

No more than two months’ rent. O.C.G.A. 44-7-30.1 provides that no landlord shall demand or receive a security deposit in an amount that exceeds the equivalent of two months’ rent. There is no exception in the section for pets, for a poor credit history, or for a co-signer arrangement.

What counts toward the cap is set by the definitions in O.C.G.A. 44-7-30. A security deposit is money or any other form of security given by a tenant to a landlord and held by the landlord on the tenant’s behalf under a residential rental agreement, and it expressly includes damage deposits, advance rent deposits and pet deposits. It excludes nonrefundable fees — money the parties agreed would not be refunded — and money applied toward rent or toward reimbursement of services and utilities provided to the tenant. So a pet deposit sits inside the cap, and a fee only sits outside it if the lease actually says it is nonrefundable. Calling something a fee in conversation does not move it.

The cap section prescribes no remedy of its own, which is a point worth stating plainly rather than filling in. Some coverage asserts that any excess is automatically refundable or automatically unenforceable; the statute says neither. What the statute does say is that the demand or receipt of an over-cap deposit is prohibited, and the deposit remains subject to the rest of the article — escrow, the lists, the thirty-day accounting and O.C.G.A. 44-7-35. Our Georgia security deposit laws guide covers the interaction in more detail.

Yes, and this is the most-missed rule in Georgia landlord-tenant law. O.C.G.A. 44-7-33(a) provides that prior to tendering a security deposit, the tenant shall be presented with a comprehensive list of any existing damage to the premises, which shall be for the tenant’s permanent retention.

Four things follow from that sentence, and template leases carry none of them. The list comes before the money, not at some point during move-in week. It belongs to the tenant permanently, so a landlord who keeps the only copy has not complied. The tenant has an express right to inspect the premises to check the list’s accuracy before taking occupancy. And both parties sign it, whereupon the signed list is conclusive evidence of its accuracy — though never conclusive as to latent defects, which is the tenant’s protection against a defect that no walk-through would reveal. A tenant who refuses to sign must state specifically in writing the items dissented from, and sign that statement of dissent.

At the other end of the tenancy, O.C.G.A. 44-7-33(b)(1) gives the landlord three business days after termination and vacation, or surrender and acceptance, whichever comes first, to inspect and compile a comprehensive list of any damage that is the basis for a charge against the deposit, with an estimated dollar value for each item. On request the tenant has the right to inspect the premises and that list within five business days. If the tenant vacates without notifying the landlord, subsection (b)(2) lets the landlord compile and sign the list within a reasonable time after discovering the vacancy.

Then comes the part that cuts against tenants, and it is almost invisible in published coverage. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-33(c), a tenant who is present for the move-out inspection and signs the final damage list, or who fails to dissent specifically, is not entitled to recover the security deposit or any other damages under O.C.G.A. 44-7-35 — provided the lists contain written notice of the tenant’s duty to sign or to dissent. A tenant who did not inspect, was not present, and did not request a copy of the final list keeps the right to dispute. So the tenant’s leverage in Georgia depends on a signature or a written dissent, and the landlord’s ability to rely on either depends on having put the warning on the form. Build both lists with our Georgia move-in / move-out checklist.

In a dedicated escrow account, or under a surety bond — and the tenant must be told in writing which bank. O.C.G.A. 44-7-31 requires that a security deposit held by a landlord or the landlord’s agent be deposited in an escrow account established only for that purpose in a bank or lending institution subject to regulation by the state or by an agency of the United States government. The deposit is held in trust for the tenant. And the section closes with a duty most leases skip entirely: tenants shall be informed in writing of the location of that escrow account.

O.C.G.A. 44-7-32 supplies the alternative. Instead of escrow, the landlord may post and maintain an effective surety bond with the clerk of the superior court in the county where the dwelling unit is located, in the amount of the total deposits held or fifty thousand dollars, whichever is less. The bond is executed by the landlord as principal with a licensed surety company, is conditioned on faithful compliance with O.C.G.A. 44-7-34 and on return of the deposits in the event of bankruptcy or foreclosure, and runs to the benefit of any tenant injured by a violation. A surety may withdraw on thirty days’ written notice to the clerk without being released from liability already accrued.

The escrow-or-bond choice is genuinely binary. A landlord who does neither has, under O.C.G.A. 44-7-35(a), no entitlement to retain any portion of the deposit at all — which is a harsher outcome than paying damages, because it forecloses the argument before it starts.

Thirty days after obtaining possession. O.C.G.A. 44-7-34(a) requires the landlord, within thirty days after obtaining possession of the premises as provided in O.C.G.A. 44-7-33(b), to return the full security deposit to the tenant. The clock is tied to obtaining possession, which is why the move-out inspection timing in 44-7-33(b) is load-bearing rather than decorative.

Nothing may be retained for ordinary wear and tear that occurred through use of the premises for the purposes intended, provided there was no negligence, carelessness, accident or abuse by the tenant, the tenant’s household, or their invitees and guests. Where actual cause exists to retain a portion, the landlord must provide a written statement identifying the exact reasons, which must include the comprehensive damage list prepared under 44-7-33 if damage is the reason, delivered together with payment of the difference.

Delivery has a safe harbour and an endpoint. The landlord is deemed to have complied by mailing the statement and any payment to the tenant’s last known address by first-class mail. If the letter containing the payment comes back undelivered and the landlord cannot locate the tenant after reasonable effort, the payment becomes the landlord’s property ninety days after the date it was mailed. That is a strong argument for a tenant to leave a forwarding address in writing.

The section also preserves the landlord’s ordinary claims. Nothing in 44-7-34 stops a landlord retaining the deposit for unpaid rent or late-payment fees, abandonment, unpaid utility charges, repair or cleaning work the tenant contracted with third parties, unpaid pet fees, or actual damages caused by the tenant’s breach — provided the landlord attempts to mitigate those damages. And under 44-7-34(b), where a court finds neither party entitled to all or part of the deposit, the judge or jury determines an equitable disposition. Generate the accounting with our Georgia security deposit itemization form or the matching deposit return letter.

Three separate consequences under O.C.G.A. 44-7-35, and most coverage names only the third.

No entitlement to retain anything — 44-7-35(a). A landlord is not entitled to retain any portion of a security deposit where the deposit was not placed in escrow under 44-7-31 or bonded under 44-7-32, the initial damage list required by 44-7-33(a) was not made and presented to the tenant, and the final damage list required by 44-7-33(b) was not compiled and made available. This is a compliance gate, not a damages measure.

Forfeiture — 44-7-35(b). The failure of a landlord to provide the lists and written statements within the time periods specified in O.C.G.A. 44-7-34 works a forfeiture of all the landlord’s rights to withhold any portion of the deposit and of the right to bring an action against the tenant for damages to the premises. A late accounting therefore does not merely cost the deposit; it costs the separate damage claim.

Treble damages — 44-7-35(c). A landlord who fails to return any part of a deposit required to be returned is liable to the tenant for three times the sum improperly withheld plus reasonable attorney’s fees. There is one defence, and it is narrow: the landlord is liable only for the sum erroneously withheld if the landlord shows by a preponderance of the evidence that the withholding was not intentional and resulted from a bona fide error that occurred in spite of the existence of procedures reasonably designed to avoid such errors. Note what that defence requires — not merely good faith, but demonstrable procedures. A landlord with no system has no defence.

A natural person whose household owns ten or fewer rental units, unless a third party manages for a fee. O.C.G.A. 44-7-36 provides that Code Sections 44-7-31, 44-7-32, 44-7-33 and 44-7-35 shall not apply to rental units owned by a natural person if that person, their spouse and their minor children collectively own ten or fewer rental units — provided that the exemption does not apply to units for which management, including rent collection, is performed by third persons, natural or otherwise, for a fee.

Read the section for what it names and for what it does not. It names four Code sections: the escrow requirement, the bond alternative, the move-in and move-out damage lists, and the forfeiture and treble-damage remedies. It does not name 44-7-34, so the thirty-day return duty, the bar on retaining for ordinary wear and tear, and the written statement of exact reasons continue to apply to an exempt landlord in full. It does not name 44-7-30.1, so the two months’ rent cap also continues to apply. An exempt Georgia landlord is exempt from the machinery, not from the outcome.

Three qualifiers decide whether a landlord is in or out, and each is a trap. The owner must be a natural person, so a unit held in a limited liability company is outside the exemption however small the portfolio. The count aggregates the household — the person, the spouse and the minor children — so two spouses owning six units each are at twelve, not six. And the exemption is lost per unit for any unit where a third party performs management including rent collection for a fee, which means engaging a property manager mid-tenancy switches the escrow, list and treble-damage sections back on for that unit.

The practical consequence is that most individual Georgia landlords are exempt from the escrow and list requirements and do not know it, while most who use a management company are not exempt and assume they are. The form above asks both questions and the generated lease states the correct set of duties either way — and where the exemption applies, it offers the lists and separate holding as contractual undertakings, which is a sensible thing to do because the documents are the landlord’s evidence as much as the tenant’s.

None, by statute — which is exactly why the lease has to answer the question. O.C.G.A. Title 44, Chapter 7 contains no landlord access or entry provision. Not in Article 1, which runs from 44-7-1 to 44-7-24 and covers the creation of the tenancy, rent, repairs, disclosure, termination and retaliation. Not in Article 2, the security deposit article at 44-7-30 to 44-7-37. Not in Article 3, the dispossessory article at 44-7-50 to 44-7-55. Georgia simply never legislated the subject.

The widely repeated claim that a Georgia landlord must give twenty-four hours’ notice is not law. It is a reasonable default that many leases adopt, and it is what our form suggests, but it binds only because the lease says so. The nearest provision in the chapter is O.C.G.A. 44-7-4, which permits municipalities and counties to establish by local ordinance minimum security standards, not in conflict with applicable fire codes, to prevent the unauthorized entry of premises occupied by a tenant as a dwelling place, and to require landlords to comply with them. That is a building-standards provision aimed at intruders, not a rule about the landlord’s own access.

What follows for drafting is that the entry clause in a Georgia lease is doing real work rather than restating a statute. Set the notice period in hours. Say what entry is for — inspection, agreed or necessary repairs, decorations, alterations, improvements, agreed services, and showings to prospective purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workers or contractors. Carve out emergencies and reasonably believed abandonment. And keep the anti-harassment sentence, because without a statute the covenant of quiet enjoyment and the lease’s own terms are the tenant’s only protection against abusive access. Our Georgia landlord entry laws guide goes further, and the Georgia notice to enter generates the notice the lease requires.

The landlord keeps the premises in repair, and since July 2024 every residential agreement is deemed to promise a dwelling fit for human habitation. O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(a) states the duty in one line: the landlord shall keep the premises in repair and shall be liable for all substantial improvements placed upon the premises by the landlord’s consent. Subsection (b), added by the Safe at Home Act, deems every contract, lease, license or similar agreement for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation.

Neither can be waived. O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b) provides that in any agreement for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place, a landlord or a tenant may not waive, assign, transfer or otherwise avoid the rights, duties or remedies contained in 44-7-13, the landlord’s duties as to repairs and improvements, or in 44-7-14, the landlord’s liability for failure to repair. That list also protects ordinances adopted under O.C.G.A. 36-61-11, the holdover article, the distress warrant article, and — importantly — the whole of the security deposit article. The bill as introduced would have allowed a tenant to waive the habitability provision on a lease longer than five years; the enacted Act dropped that exception, so no waiver route survives.

O.C.G.A. 44-7-14 sets the liability line. Having fully parted with possession and the right of possession, the landlord is not responsible to third persons for damages resulting from the tenant’s negligence or illegal use of the premises — but is responsible for damages arising from defective construction or from the failure to keep the premises in repair.

On the tenant’s side, O.C.G.A. 44-7-11 says the tenant has no rights beyond the use of the premises and the privileges necessary for its enjoyment, and may not remove permanent fixtures or otherwise injure the property. O.C.G.A. 44-7-12 preserves the right to remove trade fixtures during the term and while in possession; anything left after the term and possession end is regarded as abandoned and becomes the landlord’s. What Georgia does not give the tenant is equally important: there is no statutory repair-and-deduct remedy and no statutory right to withhold rent. The tenant’s route is written notice, then the courts. Our Georgia habitability laws guide covers the standard and the case law around it.

No, and cooling now counts. O.C.G.A. 44-7-14.1(b) makes it unlawful for any landlord knowingly and willfully to suspend the furnishing of utilities to a tenant until after the final disposition of any dispossessory proceeding brought by that landlord against that tenant. Subsection (c) sets the penalty: a person who violates it shall, on conviction, be assessed a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars.

The Safe at Home Act’s third section rewrote the definition in subsection (a) so that “utilities” means cooling, heat, light and water service. Before July 2024 the definition read heat, light and water. Adding cooling to a Georgia statute is not a technical tidy-up; it makes an air-conditioning shut-off during a dispossessory a criminal-fine matter where previously it sat outside the section. No ranking template page mentions the change.

Two drafting notes follow. Allocating a utility account to the tenant in the lease does not entitle the landlord to interrupt service as an enforcement tool, and it does not reduce the landlord’s duty under O.C.G.A. 44-7-13 to keep the premises in repair and fit for human habitation. And the prohibition runs until final disposition, which includes the period while a dispossessory is pending, not merely before it is filed.

Sixty days from the landlord, thirty from the tenant, for a tenancy at will. O.C.G.A. 44-7-7 is one sentence long: “Sixty days’ notice from the landlord or 30 days’ notice from the tenant is necessary to terminate a tenancy at will.” The asymmetry is the whole rule, and it is the single most frequently misreported figure in Georgia landlord-tenant coverage.

The asymmetry reaches further than it looks, because of O.C.G.A. 44-7-6: where no time is specified for the termination of a tenancy, the law construes it to be a tenancy at will. An ordinary Georgia month-to-month arrangement with no stated end date is therefore a tenancy at will, and a landlord who wants it to end must give sixty days. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-10 the tenant must deliver possession at the expiration of the term, and if the tenant does not, the summary remedy in Article 3 is the landlord’s route.

Georgia has no separate rent-increase notice statute, so a rent change on a tenancy at will is accomplished by giving the 44-7-7 notice and offering new terms — which means sixty days where the landlord proposes the change. And there is no local override available: under O.C.G.A. 44-7-19 no county or municipal corporation may enact, maintain or enforce any ordinance or resolution regulating in any way the amount of rent charged for privately owned single-family or multiple-unit residential rental property. See Georgia rent increase laws and Georgia lease termination laws, and generate the paperwork with our Georgia notice to vacate or notice of non-renewal.

Georgia also supplies three statutory early-termination routes that a lease cannot override. A service member on ordered federal duty for ninety days or longer may terminate on written notice effective at least thirty days after the landlord receives it, where a permanent change of station requires a move of thirty-five miles or more, on release from active duty where the premises is thirty-five miles or more from the home of record, on orders to move into government quarters, on becoming eligible for government quarters where not moving forfeits the housing allowance, or on temporary duty or state active duty orders thirty-five miles or more away exceeding sixty days — O.C.G.A. 44-7-22, whose subsection (f) says those provisions may not be waived or modified under any circumstances. Separately, O.C.G.A. 44-7-37 caps a service member’s rent liability at thirty days’ rent plus the cost of repairing tenant-caused damage where permanent change of station or temporary duty orders exceeding three months arrive after the lease is signed. And O.C.G.A. 44-7-23 gives a tenant protected by a civil or criminal family violence order or stalking order a route out that is unusually generous and unusually specific.

That third route deserves its own paragraph, because leases routinely contradict it. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-23(b) a tenant may terminate effective thirty days after giving the landlord written notice of termination where such an order has been issued protecting that tenant or the tenant’s minor child — and expressly including the case where the protected person is a joint tenant, or a joint tenant’s minor child, even where that protected tenant had no obligation to pay rent. Subsection (c) requires the notice to be accompanied by a copy of the order, plus a copy of the police report where the order was an ex parte temporary protective order. Subsection (d) then does the money: the tenant may occupy until the termination takes effect, is liable for rent prorated to the effective date and for sums already delinquent, and shall not be liable for any other fees, rent or damages arising from the early termination — and where the tenant terminates fourteen or more days before occupancy, no damages or penalties of any kind may be assessed at all. Subsection (e) closes it: the section shall not be waived or modified by the agreement of the parties under any circumstances, so an early-termination fee clause is unenforceable against a qualifying tenant. Our Georgia breaking-lease laws guide covers the tenant’s side.

For money owed, a notice to vacate or pay within three business days. O.C.G.A. 44-7-50(c), added by the Safe at Home Act, provides that where a tenant fails to pay the rent, late fees, utilities or other charges owed to the landlord when due, the landlord may proceed to the dispossessory affidavit only after the tenant has been provided with a notice to vacate or pay all past due rent, late fees, utilities and other charges owed within three business days, and has refused to pay or failed to deliver possession.

Note the boundary, because several 2026 summaries state it wrongly. The three-business-day notice attaches to money owed. It is not a general right to cure any lease violation, and it does not convert Georgia into a notice-to-cure state for non-monetary breaches. For a holdover, a tenancy at will, or a tenancy at sufferance, O.C.G.A. 44-7-50(a) still governs: the owner demands possession and, on refusal or failure to deliver, makes an affidavit under oath before a judge, clerk, deputy clerk, magistrate or notary public.

How the notice is delivered is now a lease-drafting duty. New O.C.G.A. 44-7-50(d) requires the demand for possession under subsection (a), or the three-day notice to vacate or pay under subsection (c), to be posted in a sealed envelope conspicuously on the door of the property and delivered via any additional method or methods agreed upon in the rental agreement. The statute therefore points back at the lease for the second delivery channel — and a lease that names none leaves the landlord with only the door posting. That is why the form above has a field for it, and it is a field no template lease in this SERP carries.

After filing, the sequence is quick. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-51 the summons commands the tenant to answer, orally or in writing, within seven days of actual service; where the seventh day is a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the answer may be made on the next day that is not. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-52 a tenant in a nonpayment case may tender all rents allegedly owed plus the cost of the dispossessory warrant within seven days of service, and that tender is a complete defence — but a landlord is required to accept such a tender from an individual tenant only once in any twelve-month period. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-55, judgment against the tenant produces a writ of possession effective at the expiration of seven days after the judgment date; the writ authorizes removal of the tenant’s personal property, the landlord is expressly not a bailee of it and owes no duty regarding it, and after execution the property is regarded as abandoned. See Georgia eviction notice laws and the Georgia eviction process, and generate the demand with our Georgia three-day notice to pay rent or quit or demand for possession.

A protected tenant act, followed within three months by one of five landlord acts. O.C.G.A. 44-7-24 builds the claim in two halves. The tenant establishes a prima-facie case by showing an action under subsection (b) relating to a life, health, safety or habitability concern — exercising or attempting to exercise a right in good faith, giving the landlord a notice to repair, complaining in good faith to a code-enforcement entity or a public utility about a problem the landlord must repair, or establishing, attempting to establish or participating in a tenant organization — together with a landlord action under subsection (c) within three months: filing a dispossessory, depriving the tenant of use of the premises, decreasing services, increasing rent or terminating the lease, or materially interfering with the tenant’s rights.

Subsection (d) carves out a good deal. A landlord is not liable for increasing rent or reducing services under an escalation clause for utilities, taxes or insurance; as part of a pattern applied to an entire multiunit building or complex; or under the terms of a state or federal program involving federal funds, tenant assistance or tax credits. Nor is a landlord liable for a dispossessory or termination based on rent delinquency at the time of the notice to vacate, intentional property damage or threats to personal safety, breach by serious misconduct or criminal acts, or holding over after either side’s notice.

Subsection (e) sets the remedy, and it is concrete: retaliation is a defence to the dispossessory, and the tenant may recover a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus five hundred dollars, court costs, reasonable attorney’s fees where the conduct is willful, wanton or malicious, and declaratory relief — less any delinquent rents or other sums owed to the landlord. Subsection (f) gives the landlord a rebuttable defence: that the property was inspected within the prior twelve months under a federal, state or local program certifying compliance with building and housing codes, or by a code enforcement officer or licensed building inspector who so certifies. That inspection defence is worth knowing before a dispute, not after.

No cap, no grace period, and a contract-law test. Georgia sets no statutory maximum late fee for residential rent and no statutory grace period. A late fee is a contract term, and the frame is O.C.G.A. 13-6-7: where the parties agree in their contract what the damages for a breach shall be, they are said to be liquidated and, unless the agreement violates some principle of law, the parties are bound. A fee bearing no relationship to the loss risks being recharacterised as an unenforceable penalty rather than liquidated damages, which is the real constraint in place of a number.

Two Georgia rent rules surprise people. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-16, all contracts for rent bear interest from the time the rent is due. And under O.C.G.A. 44-7-15, the destruction of a tenement by fire, or the loss of possession by any casualty not caused by the landlord or arising from a defect of the landlord’s title, shall not abate the rent contracted to be paid. Georgia’s default therefore runs against the tenant on casualty, and a lease drafted elsewhere that promises abatement or termination after a fire is changing Georgia law rather than restating it. If the parties want abatement, the lease must say so.

On a dishonoured rent cheque, O.C.G.A. 13-6-15 lets the payee charge a service charge of thirty dollars or 5% of the face amount, whichever is greater, plus any bank fees, when making written demand. If the maker does not pay within ten days of a conforming written demand delivered by certified mail, statutory overnight delivery, or first-class mail supported by an affidavit of service, the payee may recover double the amount owing, capped at five hundred dollars, plus court costs — subject to statutory defences and to the court’s discretion to waive the double damages for economic hardship. More at Georgia late fee laws.

Four under state law, plus one federal — and two of the four are conditional or procedural rather than hazard-based.

Landlord and manager identification — O.C.G.A. 44-7-3. At or before the commencement of a tenancy the landlord, or an agent authorized to enter into a rental agreement on the landlord’s behalf, must disclose to the tenant in writing the names and addresses of the owner of record or a person authorized to act for the owner for service of process and for receiving and receipting for demands and notice, and of the person authorized to manage the premises. Changes must be communicated within thirty days, in writing or by conspicuous posting. Subsection (b) supplies the sanction and it is unusual: a person who signs the rental agreement on the owner’s behalf and fails to make the disclosure becomes the agent of the owner for service of process, for performing the landlord’s obligations under the chapter, and for expending the rent collected to fulfil them.

The move-in list of existing damage — O.C.G.A. 44-7-33(a). Covered above. It is a document that must be handed over before the deposit is tendered, and it is the closest thing Georgia has to a mandatory lease attachment.

The escrow account location — O.C.G.A. 44-7-31. Tenants must be informed in writing of the location of the escrow account holding their deposit. Naming the bank in the lease is the cleanest way to satisfy it.

Flood history — O.C.G.A. 44-7-20, but only where the condition is met. Before entering a written residential lease, the owner must notify the prospective tenant in writing of the property’s propensity of flooding where flooding has damaged any portion of the living space covered by the lease at least three times during the five-year period immediately preceding the lease date. Flooding means inundation caused by an increased water level in an established water source such as a river, stream or drainage ditch, or by ponding at or near the point where heavy or excessive rain fell. The sanction is not a fine: an owner failing to give the notice is liable in tort to the tenant and the tenant’s family residing on the premises for damage to their personal property proximately caused by flooding during the term. The section applies to leaseholds entered into on or after July 1, 1995. Coverage that lists a blanket Georgia flood disclosure is overstating a conditional duty.

Lead-based paint — federal, 42 U.S.C. 4852d. Any dwelling built before 1978 requires the federal disclosure, the pamphlet, and any known records or reports. Georgia adds no lead disclosure statute of its own. Our Georgia lead-based paint disclosure form handles it.

Georgia requires nothing else in a residential lease. Radon, bed bugs, asbestos, methamphetamine contamination, ordnance proximity, pending demolition, shared utilities, carbon monoxide and the sex-offender registry are all requirements of other states. Nor is there a Georgia fire safety addendum: two ranking template pages list one and cite O.C.G.A. 25-2-13, but that section is a fire-marshal building-standards provision governing special-hazard structures — buildings over three stories, large residential buildings, hotels, schools, hospitals and the like — and the Safety Fire Commissioner’s rules for them. It imposes no disclosure duty on a residential landlord and requires nothing to be attached to a lease. Finally, O.C.G.A. 44-1-16 runs the other way: it provides that no cause of action arises against an owner or broker for failing to disclose that a property was the site of a homicide, felony, suicide or death, or was occupied by a person with a disease highly unlikely to be transmitted through occupancy — though a direct question must be answered truthfully to the best of individual knowledge, except where answering would violate fair housing law.

Georgia has no long prohibited-provisions list of the kind uniform-act states carry. It has an anti-waiver rule and one very specific voiding rule, and between them they defeat most of the clauses an out-of-state template imports.

The anti-waiver rule — O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b). In any contract, lease, license agreement or similar agreement, oral or written, for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place, a landlord or a tenant may not waive, assign, transfer or otherwise avoid any of the rights, duties or remedies contained in:

• O.C.G.A. 44-7-13 — the landlord’s duties as to repairs and improvements, which now carries the deemed provision that the premises is fit for human habitation.
• O.C.G.A. 44-7-14 — the landlord’s liability for failure to repair.
• Ordinances adopted under O.C.G.A. 36-61-11.
• Article 3 of the chapter — proceedings against tenants holding over.
• Article 4 of the chapter — distress warrants.
• Article 2 of the chapter — security deposits, so the escrow, list, return and treble-damage rules cannot be contracted away.
• Any applicable provision of Chapter 11 of Title 9 not superseded by the chapter.

The attorney’s fee rule — O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(c). A provision for the payment by the tenant of the landlord’s attorney’s fees upon the tenant’s breach, contained in any agreement for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place, shall be void unless the provision also provides for the payment by the landlord of the tenant’s attorney’s fees upon the landlord’s breach. Georgia neither bans a fee clause nor blesses a one-sided one; it voids the one-sided version by operation of statute. A clause awarding fees to whichever party prevails satisfies the reciprocity requirement in both directions, and that is the only version the form above generates. A one-sided fee clause copied from another jurisdiction’s template is, in a Georgia residential lease, simply void.

Service member rights — O.C.G.A. 44-7-22(f). The service member termination provisions may not be waived or modified by the agreement of the parties under any circumstances. A lease clause requiring a service member to pay out the balance of the term is unenforceable against a tenant who qualifies.

• Taking the deposit before handing over the move-in list. O.C.G.A. 44-7-33(a) requires the existing-damage list prior to tendering the deposit, and 44-7-35(a) ties the right to retain anything to having done it.
• Keeping the only copy of the move-in list. The statute says it is for the tenant’s permanent retention.
• Leaving the duty-to-sign warning off the damage lists. Without it, 44-7-33(c) does not bar a tenant who signed or stayed silent from disputing the charges.
• Collecting more than two months’ rent as a deposit. O.C.G.A. 44-7-30.1 caps it, and a pet deposit counts because 44-7-30(3) puts pet deposits inside the definition.
• Assuming the ten-or-fewer-unit exemption removes every deposit duty. O.C.G.A. 44-7-36 does not name 44-7-34 or 44-7-30.1, so the thirty-day return and the cap still bind.
• Hiring a management company and still relying on the exemption. Third-party management including rent collection for a fee cancels it.
• Holding the deposit in the landlord’s own bank account. O.C.G.A. 44-7-31 requires a dedicated escrow account and written notice of its location, unless the bond alternative or the exemption applies.
• Giving thirty days’ notice to end a tenancy at will. O.C.G.A. 44-7-7 requires sixty from the landlord; thirty is the tenant’s figure.
• Writing a twenty-four-hour entry rule as if it were Georgia law. There is no entry statute. State it as a lease term, or it will not exist.
• Naming no additional delivery method for a demand for possession. O.C.G.A. 44-7-50(d) requires delivery by any method agreed in the rental agreement, so the lease has to supply one.
• Using the three-business-day notice for a non-monetary breach. O.C.G.A. 44-7-50(c) attaches to rent, late fees, utilities and other charges owed.
• Copying a one-sided attorney’s fee clause. O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(c) makes it void unless it also pays the tenant’s fees.
• Disclaiming habitability or the duty to repair. O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b) makes 44-7-13 and 44-7-14 non-waivable.
• Cutting off cooling to force a move-out. The Safe at Home Act added cooling to O.C.G.A. 44-7-14.1, and the shut-off is unlawful until final disposition of the dispossessory.
• Promising rent abatement after a fire without checking the default. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-15 casualty does not abate rent, so an abatement clause is a deliberate change, not boilerplate.
• Attaching a fire safety addendum because a template said Georgia requires one. O.C.G.A. 25-2-13 is a building-standards section and requires nothing in a lease.

A well-drafted lease decides who wins a dispute; screening decides whether there is one. Georgia’s treble damages and its forfeiture rule both put the landlord’s own compliance under scrutiny before the tenant’s conduct is ever reached, and its thin statutory floor means the paperwork and the tenant selection are doing most of the work. Verifiable income, a clean payment history, and no prior dispossessory filings remain the strongest predictors of a quiet tenancy. Our tenant screening report covers credit, eviction filings, criminal background, and employment verification. Screen first, then paper the tenancy with this lease — and see Georgia tenant screening laws for what you may and may not consider.

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